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touching peace upon

Sunday, January 21st, 2007

Where does one feel sadness?

It’s not in the head. Not the heart really either. For me it sits at the bottom of my ribcage, quivering, where if it decided to make a run for it, it would escape by the way of my esophagus; a wrong way exit where words would scrape against the walls and form into something wretched on their way out.

Maybe it’s our efforts to restrain and contain that squeeze tears from our eyes in exertion. Because the more I live and see, the more I feed that small beast that quivers in that cave; it has grown to a size that makes crying one of the things I do best. Not only in sadness, but in anger, happiness, compassion, love, shame, horror, bliss and even emptiness. In fact, I would say my emptiness-onset tears are my most beloved and sacred – as when they are shed, I feel heaviness relieved and lightness filled, lifted closer to something divine in leaving a body of self-fullness behind. But emptiness tears are not those I cry today. Today my tears are heavy. They pull my shoulders down. They wring my neck. They choke my throat. The pinch my mouth together. They crease my forehead and scrunch my eyebrows. They plant my feet into the floor and make my whole body want to cringe close to the ground. They take my hands from the keyboard and make me put them over my mouth. Not wanting to let escape that wretched sound.

Wailing.

That is the term that was used to describe the women and children on the streets outside of the morgue in Guatemala City. I know. I knew Hanley well enough to understand why those women wail. Because I witnessed a few, I can see every; moment that she stepped into a life and handed a mother of seven a rice sack full of food, or provided antibiotics to a waning infant, or put shoes on the youngest daughter and sent her to school or offered skill training and a job to the oldest son, or sent a social worker to listen to the story of a missing father. I know why those women wail. Because having grown accustomed to the dark of living life in shadows, the one person who unexpectedly reached out, touched them, and acknowledged their existence and right to live, has died. And do we dare even ask, will she take the only hope she had inspired in all of us with her? No we don’t ask. We don’t want to know. It’s easier to wail and cry.

I have written about Hanley Denning a number of times on this blog. She was first my boss and then my friend and mentor. Today, I clutch my chest and hold that quivering still for a second, thanking every star that aligned in my favor to give me the opportunity, last fall, to hug her and tell her face to face, “Hanley – you are the most inspiring person I’ve ever met in my life.”

In six years of travel around the world, I have never met anyone who personally molded humanity to higher goodness more than this woman did with her own hands. She is. She was the most valuable player I’ve ever encountered, and I simply cannot rationalize why, of all on this planet, she should be sacrificed.

I don’t cry because I miss Hanley. Hanley would not miss Hanley. And Hanley would never, ever cry for Hanley. Hanley did not leave behind possessions or offspring or life partners or personal passions. She never did anything but work tirelessly to care for everyone else. In a way, there was no Hanley. She was nothing but her goodness and gifts to others. And now that I reread that sentence, maybe I can summon some of those sacred emptiness tears too. For if ego grounds us, then Hanley never lived among us. And is she was only her goodness, then she immortally walks alongside us. And if she is what she inspired, then those right intentions and actions can only be shared and grow on cumulatively.

Although I do feel the world right now cringing in her absence, after the wailing, comes always a calm. And now that I have cried, I find that it isn’t her absence, but rather her continued presence, that touches peace upon that which quivers within me.

*****
Crash kills poor children’s ‘angel’ – Portland Press Herald

I Have Lice - 2001 Reflection on Volunteering with Safe Passage

www.safepassage.org – Hope, Education, Opportunity

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and Merc for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in NGOs & service learning, guatemala, on tears & loss | 9 Comments »

soft spot

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

(Evening update follows the original post.)

*****

The surgeon’s assistant finishes his explanation of the procedure and asks, “So do you have any final questions, concerns or requests?”

“Yea. My family knows me for having a tough heart and I’m concerned about what you’re going to do to it. Don’t put any soft spots in my heart, okay?!”

The doctor cocks his head quizzically as the joke threatens to make a dash over his head. The rest of the room, however, snickers, giggles and laughs loud enough to create the first echo of a ruckus that will later ignite the complaint of a neighbor and messenger nurse to “keep it down.” But if there’s one thing my father is known for not doing, it’s “keeping it down.” Not even the six valium he swallowed from the small paper cup can curb the adjective that the nursing staff have attached to the name and fame of the patient in Rm. 634; “ornery.”

Having been prodded and poked every hour throughout the night to gauge insulin levels, monitor rates, and prep the surgery, he hasn’t been allowed a sequential thirty minutes to sleep. My father looks gray and frail in the pale hospital gown and narrow bed, but the fiery resiliency of his spirit flares as he mumbles with eyes half closed to the 200 lb male attending nurse, “Let’s go out to the parking lot. I’m going to kick your ass.”

The audience (my family) goes off task and bursts out laughing again; It’s hardly the first time. While other waiting families clutch tissues and pat swollen eyes, my family turns a white laminated “heart healthy” menu around and proceeds to play “hang man” using the medical terms from the “Guide To Heart Patient Recovery.” The stick man is pathetically underdeveloped as my sister-in-law just recently replaced “Mrs.” with “Dr.” and I only get a head and one “X’ed” out eye before “Incentive Spirometer!” is correctly shouted out. But it’s during our tour of the CRU (Cardiac Recovery Unit) that we really begin to appreciate having a doctor in the family. While watching a myriad of machines assisting with the breathing, beating and bodily functioning of a recent patient yet to awaken, my sister-in-law swiftly cuts across our group to position my brother on the ground upon recognition that the color of his skin (green) was a go-light indicating that’d he was on his way to finding a much quicker and less conscious way to the floor. We find the space for seriousness when after reclaiming his normal color we agree to my brother’s request to, “not let Dad know that I *almost* fainted in the CRU until AFTER the surgery.”

Both of my father’s parents died while he was a still a young child. Raised an orphan, he dedicated 67 years to creating the family he never had while growing up. Right before my dad is wheeled through the double doors, his four children and wife pat his shoulder and whisper words of support and love. And I feel the recognition of his ultimate life achievement warm him.

In the waiting room I fall asleep. I dream of my dad. We are outside of the hospital and we’re surrounded by the dark and crisp freshness of a day before sunrise. He looks confused and stares through the dark to the horizon. “Dad, aren’t you supposed to be in the hospital?” I ask. He is completely calm. But he doesn’t answer my question. He just keeps watching the horizon. And it’s apparent that he hasn’t decided on the answer to that question yet.

I wake up.

It’s now 9:45am. The nurse just stopped by and told us that my father is on bypass and both his heart and lungs are officially on their first vacation in life from beating and breathing. Our own hearts skip as we too hold our breath – and wait.

*****

4:30pm

One visitor is allowed every two hours for 10 minutes in the CRU.

My father is awake and as I come closer he rolls his eyes, groans and chuckles.

The attending nurse says, “You know. He’s been giving me a hell of a time.”

I try to tame my laugh noticing that my father’s recently cut chest plate is heaving up and down in a motion only made possible by a sizable shot of morphine.

The nurse continues, “but you can give him some ice cubes if he’s nice to you.”

I pick up the plastic cup and select a few of the larger ice cubes and with a spoon move towards the parched lips of my dehydrated father.

He hesitates only long enough to say, just loud enough for the nurse to hear, “got any vodka for this ice?!”

He doesn’t drink. And he won’t remember this conversation.

But we all laugh out loud.

And the question in my morning’s dream is answered.

*****

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*sol bows her “namaste” and gratitude to World Nomads Travel Insurance, ThinkHost and MercuryFrog for their ever-supporting roles in the realization of her dream.

Posted in gratitude, on love, on tears & loss | 4 Comments »

the last turtle

Thursday, December 15th, 2005

14.1, 3.1, 2.1

15.2, 3.4, 2.3

12.5, 2.7, 2.0

“Oh my gosh, this one’s so little!” I put the slide rule down and, with two careful fingers, lift the little creature up. His width, as measured exactly to be 2.0 centimeters, is small enough to make my eyes cross when I hold him up to my nose for closer examination.

His little eyes blink back at mine but, blinded by will power, he shows no fear. For with the clockwork and inexhaustible motion of a wind-up toy, this flawless miniature replica of an adult Olive Ridley turtle paddles with impressive and indiscriminate strength against sand or hand in search of the swim in the sea that he will spend the rest of his life in.

I look into the wire mesh enclosure that circles the sand where this nest hatches and a dozen tiny sea turtle heads poke their exhausted beaks from the sand. Despite that they appear to be identical hund-lets, here already the hatchlings begin to demonstrate their individual character as, upon the same first breath of fresh sea air, some collapse in relief and other are re-invigorated to a new full charge towards the sea. And both are quite validated responses, for after being abandoned by my mother, breaking out of my egg and spending the next 48 hours digging out of my own birth-grave, I too would fancy myself deserving of a break — either from work or for the water.

Although instinct (alone) has taught this hatchling the dangers of the swooping shadows of predators, the collective unconscious of this species has yet to imprint the intuitive instructions on how to swerve the myriad traps human beings have put in place to successfully impede the survival of these little life seedlings. The literal “dead ends” of the sea turtle’s life path are extensive, and almost exclusively the fault of fallout from (what I can only assume is) man’s suicide mission here on earth. Pesticides and heavy metals from the mass pollutants dumped in the sea cause a multitude of mutations and fatal diseases. Heavy ship traffic results in numerous propeller collisions. Shrimp trawling and fishing drift nets entangle and drown untold thousands of adult turtles. Trash, particularly plastic bags, are confused with jellyfish which are then eaten and cause suffocation. Nests are excavated at industrial levels with the eggs sold as purported aphrodisiacs throughout Latin America. Pregnant turtles are captured on their way to nest and are slaughtered for their meat, liver oils and/or shells which are used in making jewelry marketed to tourists. Artificial lighting caused by developments on beaches both dissuade mothers from nesting and disorientate hatchlings, leaving them lost so long that they die from dehydration in their unsuccessful quests to find the ocean.

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I put the hatchling into the bucket and as he crawls upon the backs of his brothers and struggles so desperately to climb the impossibly slick walls, his frustration with this woman-made obstacle is obvious. But what the hatchling doesn’t know is that 45 days ago, a poacher followed his mother during her annual adventure from the sea, waited for her to give birth, stole her eggs from the nest, and saved his chance of survival. Yes, saved. For another fact unknown to this hatchling is that that thanks to our massive global pollution of the Earth and a phenomenon that men in suits to this day deny, the black sand beaches of Guatemala have warmed to temperatures that make the land nothing but an underground oven that bakes the nest at lethal temperatures and cooks each and every hatchling alive. The poacher that spared this hatchling only did so because he is mandated by Guatemalan law to donate a percentage of the eggs he collects to the local hatchery (the one I am volunteering at).

But the good fortune of this hatchling neither starts nor stops here. For his mother was the very lucky one in 5,000 of her species siblings to reach the age of sexual maturity that brought her back to nest on this beach. This beach, by the way, is the exact same beach that she herself was born on. Despite the fact that it’s been over a dozen years and thousands of annual miles migrating to far and foreign seas since she hatched and crawled across this sand to her first swim, she still knows her way back and returns to the very same beach that she herself was born on. This navigational marvel still humbles the best of human scientist: some say sea turtles travel in alignment to the stars, others hypothesize that they feel the subtle gravitation pulls of the moon, and still others theorize that they simply follow their noses recognizing the most delicate and directional smells of the sand that once housed the outer womb of their first home. In any case, it’s a mystery we do not, and most likely will never, solve. For every single type of sea turtle found in the ocean today is endangered. Leatherback turtles have been swimming in the Earth’s oceans for over 150 million years; they actually swam with the dinosaurs! Yet on my last night strolling the beach scouting for nesting females (while volunteering for the Leatherback Conservation Project in Costa Rica in 2003), I asked one of the long-term local workers if he thought the leatherbacks had any real chance of surviving the age of humanity and he replied, “if things continue the way they are now, there won’t be a single leatherback in the ocean in ten years.”

I turn my attention back to the next hatchling I pull out of the nest. I struggle to hold her still as she tirelessly does consecutive push-ups on my palm in her impressive attempt to paddle herself out of my hand.

When and by what hand was this adamant will to live wound, I, with admiration, wonder?!

I don’t know. But I pledge to her my support. The statistics are indeed dismal, but quite an equal match for the enormous will exhibited in my palm. And if she thinks she can do it, or even only asks for a chance, I will match her instinctual willpower with my intentional optimism.

Finally I manage to measure her weight, length and width…

14.9, 3.1, 2.2

She is the last turtle. I mark down her measurements, put her into the bucket and carry her out to the sea, whereupon I find a nice spot a few meters from the water line and delicately dump the pile of hatchlings out. I turn those upside-down right-side up and then quickly walk down into the water and turn my flashlight on to help guide their way, on this moonless night, towards (what would be) the natural light of the sea. The salty air and damp sand instantly invigorate even the sleepers and the race towards the water, towards a lifetime, towards opportunity, is on. Their hydrodynamic and streamlined flippers are hardly appropriate for land travel, but they make so light of the first of many disadvantages they will encounter in this life. They struggle forth making fast and outstanding gain towards the water and finally, the first far-reaching wave and fastest paddling hatchling collide. As she catches that wave and rides, I swear I hear her sigh. I watch her tumble with a wicked current into the adventure of her lifetime and realize that the shared sigh of longing and hope for life — was mine.

Feeling inspired to adopt a turtle nest of your own?

< Adopt a turtle nest at the ARCAS Hawaii Hatchery in Monterrico, Guatemala.
They do not yet have any way to receive online donations, so if you trust me (I do), I’m very happy to collect donations ($15 USD per nest) through paypal and will make sure the name and donation are handed over to my friends running the center in Guatemala. For a detailed explanation on what it means to, “Sponsor A Nest” at Parque Hawaii in Guatemala, go to: www.sponsoranest.com.

Official PayPal Seal

OR…

< Adopt a nest at the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida

< Adopt a nest at the Sea Turtle Restoration Project in San Diego

< Be a turtle benefactor at Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge

Posted in NGOs & service learning, central america, getting political (warned), on nature, on tears & loss | 1 Comment »

on the altar of humility

Wednesday, October 12th, 2005

October 13th, 2005
Xela, Guatemala
Tropical Storm Stan Evacuee Camp

“psssst!”

I look around the room, but there is only an old woman stooped over a broom sweeping the floor.

People have been hissing at me all day, discretely calling me over to this or that corner and whispering a request to politely fetch them an additional bag of beans, extra bottle of water or second sweater beyond that which has been sanctioned to them.

Hesitant to source the hiss and address its subsequent plea, I return to my task of untying a difficult knot that cinches together another black bag of donated clothing. I pull out a tiny pair of jeans fit for either an 13-year old or an American celebrity and deliberate which pile, “girls” or “women,” is appropriate…

“pssssst!”

The woman with the broom is now standing erect and points at something on the floor near me. I follow her finger and find the destination of its direction to be that of a naked doll which, with no appropriate pile, lay abandoned, awkward and alone on the floor. The old woman’s manner is that of an experienced grandmother with a command and resolve that negates all hesitation and demands only immediate attention.

“Well pick it up!” she furrows her brow and says with noted impatience for my delayed comprehension.

With the loyalty and respect of a granddaughter of an age fitting into the jeans I hold, I immediately obey her command. The old woman resumes sweeping and when I collect the doll and hand it to her, she looks up at me as if I have gravely disturbed both her sacred work and sanity and then rolls her eyes at my obvious idiocy. “Not for me! Go upstairs and give it to the child! Give it to the girl taking care of her baby brother!”

Not because I can’t find the right words in Spanish, but because I can’t find my comprehension in any language, I stand silenced between my desire to comply and confusion over the command. Accentuated by an exhausted sigh, the old woman finally realizes the foreign nature of whom she is addressing; she gracefully leans her broom against the way and then gathers both her compassion and my hand and leads me through a door.

As she leads me up the stairs she explains, “You see, there is a child here that I want to have this doll. Her mother went back to their house to recover what items she could before they fled during the storm to take rescue in this evacuee center. The mother left her young daughter here to care for her baby son, but the girl is too young to be caring for the child, and she keeps leaving her brother alone, and I think that perhaps if she has a toy, she will not go straying out into the hallways and will instead stay in the room and care for her brother.”

When we reach the top of the stairs, we begin to walk down the hallway of, what appears to be, an old school building. The old woman, still holding my hand, pulls me into one of the classrooms. Against one wall a dozen miniature-people-sized school desks that are piled upside down on top of each other confirm that the building is indeed a school in its off-Storm-Stan-evacuee-house hours. On the floor thick blankets are spread marking the territory, and fencing the limited rescued possessions, of each family of evacuees that occupy the room. The old woman shakes her head that this room is not the one she seeks and tugs on my sleeve and wandering eyes to move along.

When we move back into the hall, the old woman’s ears suddenly perk and her steps fall with renewed certainty as we follow the wail of a small child towards a neighboring classroom. Blankets, here too, patchwork the floor into individual camps marked by one or more sleeping bodies sprawled across each site. On the blanket nearest the door, a child, owning not more than two years, sits with back erect and mouth open, crying for the return of familiar company that’s evidently disappeared.

A small group of young boys kick at a makeshift ball nearby and the old woman grabs the attention of one with a firm hand. The boy stands quickly to attention and I see that I’m not the only one that falls into order under the observation of my companion commandant.

“Who is the guardian of this crying child?!” she assertively questions. The young boy turns and takes notice, as if for the first time, of the toddler with the red and tear-stained face sitting nearby. Suddenly silenced by a binky of unaccustomed attention, the toddler’s wail stops as he too falls into the same silent trance graced upon all by the old woman’s grandmotherly gaze.

“Well?!,” she continues in demand of an answer.

The boy lowers his head, heavied by grandmotherly-inspired guilt, and shrugs his shoulders in shamed uncertainty. One of his playmates jumps to his rescue and says, “I think his sister is caring for him, she’s in the hall.”

Perhaps intuitively sensing that she was being called upon the small sister makes an appearance in the doorway.

I am shocked. The girl could not be any older than six years old. She’s a year younger than my little niece who isn’t allowed on the street sidewalk alone. And this child’s duty is to care for a toddler of whom she is, at the most, four years senior?

“Come here child,” the old woman commands softly and the girl obeys.

In a voice on a bed of compassion and love the old woman instructs, “You are a very good girl to be taking care of your little brother when your mother is gone. But you must stay close to him, in this room, so that he knows that you are near and doesn’t feel lonely. Now look, we’ve brought you a present…”

The woman cues me with a nudge to offer the doll. I squat to the girl’s height and offer her the gift. The small girl’s eyes widen with wonder and delight as she eagerly embraces her new toy.

“So you stay in this room and take good care of these babies okay?” she finishes with a loving pat on the girl’s shoulder. Then with the safe soft hand she takes mine again and leads me out to the hallway.

On my way out, I turn and look back at the mat where the baby brother is now gurgling giggles of joy at the dancing doll that the small girl bounces in front of him in a successful effort to entertain them both.

Three babies.

Sometimes I think that humanity is long overdue for a huge dose of Humility that Pachamama (Mother Earth) will be all too happy to administer with a reality -crashing and -questioning course of tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes. Having to silently witness the rape of the world on a daily basis, I find myself sometimes secretly cheering for her well deserved slaps back. Very aware of the red on my own hands, each morning, I offer my own existence for sacrifice on the Altar of Humanly Humility, alerting the Earth that I would be honored to donate my life to the lesson that will humble humans to their proper earth-kissing place on this planet.

But it’s never me.

It’s always the poor, the young, the sick, the old, the homeless, the dark-skinned, the disadvantaged and those that live closest to the earth that get humbled to it first. Babies, today, sit innocently on altars in Guatemala, Mexico, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and in every other country, state, county and camp in the world. So what will are we willing to sacrifice before we finally learn our lesson?

For in (merely our) end, even if we Humans continue to discriminate, Pachamama, teaching by example, will not.

And oddly enough, that brings me peace.

******

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Posted in NGOs & service learning, getting political (warned), guatemala, on fear, on tears & loss | No Comments »

all saints

Monday, August 29th, 2005

The bus ungracefully bumbles its way along a long unpaved road. Its full load of passengers jiggles and jostle more to the tune of the bumps on the gravel path than that of the reggaeton blasting from the stereo. We are packed four to each side’s bench seat (where a decade ago two American children sat) with two or three standing on either side of where the center-sitters’ hips meet. Although there are many hypotheses as to why these modes of transportation are called, “chicken busses,” the one that theorizes that it’s because passengers are packed like poultry in a coop, at the present moment, seems most suiting.

I lean forward and fold my arms across the back of the seat in front of me and as I do so, I feel the lungs of my neighbors expand as the absence of my shoulders, suddenly pulled out from the horizontally stacked backbone of wall to wall bodies, relieves some of the pressure and gives way for some well-needed wiggles.

Using my folded arms as a cushion, I rest my forehead against the back of the seat in front of me and quickly fall back into a perforated sleep of exhaustion. I don’t usually sleep on busses but for some reason find this case of sleepiness, which is shared by all the other tired souls that fill this space, contagious

The bus breaks over a particularly large crack in the road and as the wheels clunk down, a majority of the heads all stir awake from slumber for just a single brief moment before they find their chins again bobbing towards their chests.

My head too turns up. But a fleeting image of that which I saw last behind my closed eyes and on the stage of my subconscious startles me awake. It was a vision of a baby’s face; eyes rolled back under closed lids, black charred skin flaking black and grey, facial features bloated out of grotesque proportion.

I look around the bus. It’s a flood of reds, greens, pinks, yellows and blues; the striking and beautiful colors of the traditional “traje” (suit/costume) of the indigenous Mayans that people these highlands.

I close my eyes again and find that the child’s face has branded the blackness with its image. The vision, scarred into my memory, silently stares back at me.

My mind suddenly races. Where would I ever get such an image? Have I seen it before? On the television while lunching at a local comedor? In a movie? Or book? I search my memory, but can find no source for the vision so three-dimensional that it couldn’t possibly fit into any picture I’ve seen in a movie or magazine.

“Just a dream,” I tell myself. And I fall asleep again.

The bus bumbles on. Passengers with swaddled children or sacks of corn get on and off. It’s market day and delicately wrapped baskets are carefully heaved on and off the roof of the bus, which both above and inside packs tighter and tighter as we arrive closer to our destination.

A pig squeals from somewhere up front and I am rustled awake from a sleep I never realized I’d entered. I don’t lift my head but I turn my face and look into the isle; and there I see a masked man; his features heavy and so defined it seems to me they must be hollow, as if only bones give shape to the black hood that hides his face. He’s holding a rifle. And although his eyes are hidden by the mask, I know he’s starring at me.

I close my eyes as fast as they blinked open and calm my racing heart with a intuitive meditation that I drop into out of both instinct and routine. It’s a prayer that I make regularly, not for my health and not for my safety, but that, “if this be the day I die, may I do so with grace, compassion and consciousness.” I don’t want to, but I open my eyes again.

And the man is gone.

The bus comes to a final jolting halt, the doors open and people begin to flood out of both ends of the bus. One of my travel mates, previously lost in the sea of seated people, climbs her way to my seat and wakes me from my startled state; “We’re here!”

In the evening I crawl into bed and my thoughts are finally granted the freedom to wander and wonder about the visions of the burnt child and masked man I’d seen on the bus. One voice inside dismisses them as dreams. Another smiles and says, “you’re crazy” (which I’m perfectly fine with being). Another voice is silent, but wants desperately to cry for a reason I’m not yet allowed to know. And then there is another voice. One that claims she is of Reason. And she says this:

“Guatemala’s 36-year civil war officially “stopped” nine years ago. The Peace Accords were perhaps signed, but the war continues for little has changed and nothing has been erased from the memories and hearts of the people who surround you and the land which grounds you. The terror, brutality, torture and rampant murdering and massacres (of which many would call genocide) that left over 200,000 people dead, over 1,000,000 displaced and countless others “disappeared” touched the lives (with a knife) of every single person in this town and on that bus. You are furious. You are furious because of the fact that the Guatemalan military has been recognized as responsible for the majority of these murders. You are enraged that in 1954, your very own country, The United States, started this civil war when the CIA orchestrated, trained and equipped an invasion from Honduras led by two exiled Guatemalan military officers who ousted the democratically nominated President Juan Jose Arevalo, who (how dare he!) tried to re-distribute unused lands “owned” by the American United Fruit company that had wrongfully and violently been seized from the indigenous Mayans in the first place. In the hills that your bus climbed through today lie mass graves, some without a single cross to mark the sites of massacres where the military, with American-made and paid arms, buried entire villages of civilians into a brutal history that went without mention in the American press aside from a few headlines to the sound of the, “Peaceful Liberation of Guatemala” (from communism!), which rings *deafeningly* in your ear at the same tone of China’s “Peaceful Liberation of Tibet” (1.2 million murdered) and America’s current, “Peaceful Liberation of Iraq” (25,000 *and counting* civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq). You are disgusted. You are furious. You are devastated. You are horrified. You are raw. And you didn’t even see it. Your mother was not raped in it. Your brother was not tortured by it. Your sister did not flee to Mexico from it. Your father was not “disappeared” in it. Your child was not orphaned by it. But every person in this town was cut and numbed by it. And did you really think you could travel untouched by it? When the scars of the war have not even yet scabbed, but still actively bleed from the souls of those (living and dead) that surround you?”

My travel mate drops into the room and I confess to her my visions, frustrations, furiousity and fears. She confesses her own, shares with me a heavy sigh, and notes how suiting the name of the town we’re in is; “Todos Santos”…

“All Saints.”

*****

(The US’s malicious involvement in Guatemala is by no means conspiracy theory. It’s all a quite well documented hisory that even ex-President Clinton finally eventually admitted was a “mistake” (but this “apology” of sorts saw so little press, I can’t find a direct quote online). For more information, an excellent movie documentary is, When The Mountains Tremble or pick up a copy of Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy by Victor Perera or, I Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala which finally brought international attention to the plight of Guaemala’s indigenous population and won Menchu the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1992. Although the “mistake” is never mentioned in any of our history books, it’s considered enough as common-known-fact to be documented even in the Lonely Planet Guatemala guidebook.)

*****

Posted in getting political (warned), guatemala, on fear, on tears & loss | No Comments »

this is india – part II

Saturday, May 21st, 2005

(This story is a continuation of the post from last week, which can be read by scrolling down to the next entry entitled, “this is india – part I”.)

*****

The Rail Official instructs me to wait until he has finished confirming the seats of the rest of the passengers in the car.

As he leaves my cabin, another man shuffles in backwards from behind him. His shirt is ripped and slung low across his back to reveal a place in the taut dark skin covering his back where a shoulder bone should be – but is not. He waves something to get the attention of all the people in the cabin in front of me, and from my seat I can see them all turn their heads; They clean their fingernails, tend to children, look for lost pens in their baggage, or just look out the window — turning their attention to anything but that which flags for it.

The man shuffles backwards into my cabin and turns around. As an obvious foreigner, I already know that I will be targeted as his ripest prospect. Indeed as I have predicted, he, ignoring the rest in the cabin, staggers straight to the white beacon of wealth.

“Didi……Didi…….Didi…….Didi….”

In Bengali, he tells me the long sad story of his life. The only word I know, “Didi,” I learned a the Mother Teresa House of the Destitute where the inmates there also tugged on my clothing to ask for help, addressing me either as a sibling or mistaking me for the nun that I am not.

“Sister……Sister……Sister…….Sister….”

As he continues his story, he throws his remaining arm to my observation and mercy. I desperately want to clean my fingernails, tend to a child, look for a lost pen, or stare out the window — but I refuse my eyes this relief.

It is my chief complaint of “my” country that the people refuse to look at the ugly truths that stare at and ask recognition of them in the staggering headlines of today’s news. Instead, distance and ignorance are too conveniently allowed to pad the cushions of the couches of comfort and conformity.

And although I’ve known this couch well, I’ve sold it right back to the devil.

“No thank you. I’ll stand. And I’ll stick to my soul.”

And it hurts. It hurts to look.

But I make myself do it.

I look at the flesh on this man’s remaining arm, which like silly putty, seems to have been twisted, pulled and remolded to the bone. I follow its elongated length and observe how it abnormally narrows around the wrist and then protrudes as a lump in the pad of his fist. And when I am finished looking at the truth of his reality, I look directly into his eyes and bow my most humble respect to the divine within him.

He pauses for a second. Perhaps caught off guard by the unusual recognition.

And then he continues again…

“Didi, please.”

In Spanish or English I can easily explain that I prefer to give time and not money, but my Bengali leaves my actions to speak. And I’ve forgotten the pile of fruit I usually bring to meet such occasions.

“Sister, please.”

This time I give up. Although this situation has happened a hundred times, and I never become any more sure or unsure if it’s the right thing to do, I reach into my pocket and pull from it the change that he asks of me. He motions with his limb to his shirt pocket, into which I drop the coins.

“Thank you Sister.”

And he leaves.

And in three minutes, another brother with a different deformed limb will come. One shuffling. Another dragging. And then the next, crawling. There’s always another. For this is India.

*****

The Rail Officer waves to me and I follow his people-parting path. The isles are slim and busy and after a modest game of Train Twister (right hand holding onto blue seat, left foot over yellow suitcase) we finally arrive at the third class A/C sleeper car. He pushes through the sealed glass door, and in wave of cool breathable air, we enter another world of India.

Newspapers written in English are shuffled as eyes peek from behind smart spectacles for only momentary and disinterested glimpses of the new visitor. Women with rings of gold around their wrists, ankles, toes and ears encourage prized sons in pressed slacks to eat another of the samosas that they’ve so diligently made and delicately packaged for the trip away from home. Uncles discuss politics together, fluently switching between Bengali and English to better express their opinions or utilize Western business lingo. A group of young boys dressed in designer jeans, each with his signature version of long and colored hair, pass around an MP3 player and start to sing, in unison, a song by an American boy band.

I take the seat indicated to me by the Rail Official and he tells me he’ll be back later to collect my “increase in fare.”

A man sitting at the window across from me leans over, “Did you move up to A/C too? You know they save these seats just for us, people like you and me. They save entire cars for us. This is how they really make their money. Hey. Where are you from? America? You’re so lucky you speak English. You know you can travel anywhere in India speaking English. I don’t speak Bengali. Or Hindi. Or Tamil. I only speak English and the local language of my state, of which I’m sure you’ve never heard. Did you know that India’s constitution recognizes 18 major languages and then, on top of that, we have over another 1000 minor languages and dialects?”

The jovial youths in the cabin adjacent have put down the MP3 player and are now laughing loudly, exaggerating the depth and volume of their voices and then emphasize their joking and jestering by cussing in English…

“SHIT Man! Fucking cool!”

I sit stunned in shock of the worlds of class and caste separated by a single, sealed A/C door.

Where, I wonder, is India?

*****

A cleanly pressed and richly dressed couple move into my cabin and sit modestly next to each other. May is the month of marriages and even louder than the dark henna tattooed up and down the new bride’s arms are the fresh, careful and delicate mannerisms that the couple use to address each other.

“Arranged Marriage,” has for me lost all its (discovered ignorantly founded) stigma and what remains left is only pure fascination and intrigue. For the first time, I am stoked to be in a culture where it is not inappropriate to stare; Because I cannot keep me eyes off the pair.

The bride rests her eyes on the ground as she gracefully asks question after question of her new husband. His responses are reserved, well thought out, and gentle. They do not look each other in the eye when they speak to each other, but they laugh or smile sweetly in unison at the end of each of his conclusions. In between each of her questions and his answers, she looks up at him with wide, interested eyes and bats her lashes like I’ve only seen in Disney movies.

For hours I silently watch them, wondering if perhaps this might actually be the first time, after all the years, months, weeks and days of family chaperoned wedding preliminaries and festivities, that they’ve had the chance to be alone together?

And who trained this woman, I wonder? An army of aunts, mothers and grandmas of a former era? For she is such a model of courtesy, respect, modesty, and controlled femininity!

She looks up, bats her eyelashes, looks down, and asks another question.

He makes the motion of scrubbing his hands (to remove the henna tattooed on the tips of his fingers) and I can tell simply by the tone of her voice that she gives him some kind of advice on the art (and removal of) of which she (and all In
dian women) is very experienced.

But he dismisses her advice.

She cocks her head for a brief moment and then tries to re-word and deliver her wisdom again with even greater grace.

But again, he, without looking at her and with a motion of his hand, waves the suggestion away.

And then I see it!

She does not look down. She does not laugh.

She turns her face the other direction, looks up to the right corner of the room…

And rolls her eyes.

And of this single glimpse I smile with the certainty, that this marriage of man and woman, will ultimately be, the same as any.

*****

(and 30 hours later…)

I have new friendships with every person in my cabin.

They have asked me every question of my family, work, schooling, income and country, and now have quite taken it upon themselves to be my personal guardians.

Our train is due to arrive five hours late and so I have already missed my connecting train ride and having no reservation at any of the booked-up hotels would be at a loss, were it not for my new friends who assure me that they’ve got a plan.

When the train finally arrives, those in my cabin politely instruct me when to sit and where to stand, and when they finally give me permission to get off the train, like elephants, they form a protective circle around me as they shuffle me off the train, across the platform, and into a special room guarded by security.

The room, full of fans set to their highest speed, has two bathrooms with showers and about 40 waiting chairs of which about a dozen are occupied with women and children. It’s 1:00am and I have six hours to wait before my next train departs. A Bollywood (India’s version of Hollywood) movie is on, which from a single glance, I make out to be a version of Beauty and the Beast (except, lacking a proper Beast costume, a man dressed like King Kong has proved adequate enough). This place is perfect for my lounge between destinations.

My new entourage smiles their approval of my approval and because it’s how they’ve been taught to salute westerners, they each proudly stick out an awkward hand to receive the novel Western custom of handshaking. Although I infinitely prefer the polite bow of Eastern salutations, I oblige and humbly stretch out, along with my hand, my most sincere gratitude.

As I settle into a seat to watch the movie, the children turn around and settle into seats to watch me. Most Bollywood movies last about six hours (slight exaggeration) and have an average of 11 different plotlines and themes (no exaggeration). This one turns out to be a mixture of Beauty and the Beast, The Nutcracker, Babes in Toyland, The Tortoise and the Hare, Ghost and Anaconda. After the finale, where all the characters (except for the Tortoise, of course) bust out in synchronized dancing, the security guard turns off the television.

Following the example of the rest of the women in the room, I lay out my shawl on the floor and roll up a sweater into a pillow.

As I lay there on the tile floor, thanking whatever deities may be for my ability to sleep on hard floors both comfortably and soundly, I feel something inside of me lift again right out of my body, and rise up to the ceiling.

Looking down at the patchwork of vibrant saris and shades of deep and beautiful skin tones spread out across the floor, there again, is that silly pale patch with the tan-clad girl on it. But as I relax my perspective and take one more step back, I see that, from a distance, her spot isn’t really so odd at all. How she managed to, I’m not sure, but she has indeed found even for herself, a place in this Quilt called India.

I squint to see more closely and note that the satisfaction of her success is marked by the slight but sure smirk of a smile across her lips.

And I smile down upon her.

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immortality burning

Thursday, March 24th, 2005

*****

Journal Entry
March 23rd, 2005
Kathmandu, Nepal
Pashupatinath Temple
The Burning (Cremation) Ghats along the Bagmati River

In insatiable appetite, a greedy fire spits out the flames of a violent hunger. Riding a wave of wind, a whipping tornado of smoke takes a turn back towards the ground and the heavy breath of burning flesh engulfs its circle of male mourners.

They do not flinch.

On the deck of the burning ghat, tearless faces await shaved scalps; A sacrifice to symbolize their new un-chosen un-attachment to the body that burns. A single, small and circular black patch on their heads is all that is left kept, seeming to me like an X marking and respecting the last line of connection, and a path we will all one day walk, between this world and the next.

In the fire, a human thigh, blackened beyond recognition, falls from its bone. Immediately, a bamboo pole is thrust into the pyre and the thigh is pushed like a log deeper into the coals. The fire rages; As if it too longs for and appreciates the consumption of that considered rare and sacred. The men sit squatted, flat feet, arms crossed, watching without word of protest, as Immortality burns.

The mothers, sisters, daughters, aunts and nieces are not here; Their tears thought too likely to lure the eye of a soul caught in the bardo (between worlds) back to a reality where their vessel is no longer capable of the carry. So once again, the men and women are pushed to their separate corners of the dance floor, women to the corner of birthing and life and men to that of dying and death.

The men sit in silence. This is the first place I have ever noticed where the swinging doors of conversation on politics, business and sport are solemnly shut. Instead the men stick their fingers into the warmer crevices of their bodies and, without word or commentary, watch the silent captions that scroll in their minds underlining the scene.

And the fire burns.

Without discrimination it burns all our accomplished and failed dreams, all our material gains and losses, all our relations of love and hate, all our deeds of both good and evil intention, and all else that ever once, positively or negatively affected our formations of earthly ego.

The wind blows again and the heavy breath of burning flesh engulfs its circle of male mourners.

They do not flinch.

What does it take for death to become an unflinching matter?

Custom? Numbness? Aloofness?

Enlightenment? Unattachment? Understanding?

Torture? Habit? Pain?

Respect? Courage? Love?

A one-eyed money sits on a perch beside me, watching with curiously human-like gestures, and less blind than I, as the fire continues to dance under death.

*****

Just want to say thank you, again, to WorldNomads for renewing their sponsorship and continuing to insure that my travels are safe and worry-free. Having been in regular contact with their staff and in use of their super-internet-friendly and overall excellent service, I feel fully confident putting my name on theirs. So if you’re planning travels and in the market for travel insurance, there’s a trustworthy and practical contact for you.

*****

I’m entering a meditation retreat at the Kopan Monastery, so I will be offline and unable to respond to emails for awhile. In the meantime, there are a few new pictures in the *new* Nepal photo album to browse through.

*****

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apology

Saturday, February 26th, 2005

“Apology”
Conversation with a Snow Leopard
February 22nd, 2005

“I’m sorry.”

It’s all I can think to say to these eyes that demand from me, in unblinking boldness, a response.

I drop my eyes in shame and break from the naked contact we have made.

Like a guardian who is left to explain to the bewildering, trusting and truth seeking eyes of a toddler whose parent has died, I stand speechless, seeking words I’ll never find.

Words and will lost, the curiosity of this beautiful beast reaches right through the wire fence and pulls my spirit directly into the cage.

Unexpectedly, I find myself without breathe. I gasp…

And am released.

The eyes blink and suddenly they speak…

“What is this word, “freedom” of which you think and are trying to breathe?”

My heart drops down. My eyes well up.

“Stop!” I demand of my whispering soul. “Be quiet!” “These secrets are not for you to share!”

But the voice chatters on…

“500 snow leopards living in captivity. Four to five thousand left living in the wild. Poaching continues. Human homes swallowing up their dens. Only in these breeding centers have they a chance to procreate. But such a small gene pool. So many still births. They will not survive, as a species, beyond the next few decades. But this one. This is one of our successes. She was born here this year.”

She blinks again.

“I’m one of the last?”

Under this gaze I am transparent. So I shut my eyes in closure of the confession I cannot make.

Like the last unicorn, we (humanity) have chased another into the sea.

Dashing madly in denial, that in black and white photos, we will all one day be.

I hang my head and repeat, heavily,

My final and heartbroken apology.

*****

< New pictures in the Darjeeling, India Photo Album.

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Fire My Spirit

Monday, July 26th, 2004

Earth my Body

Water my Blood

Air my Breath

Fire my Spirit

(From the window of the “Planet Drum” Volunteer house in Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador.)

***********************

Dear Ev,

The day you left, I had to walk in large circles around the city for hours. Cause every time I stopped physically moving, the grief of your being gone would catch up and so overwhelm me that I’d topple over in the hunger of heartache.

Do you remember when we were walking on the beach and you asked me, “This is going to hurt isn’t it? This lesson in Love is going to be really painful.”

And I replied, “Only if you want it to be. If you seek pain, if you think pain will make it meaningful, then yes, this lesson will hurt. But Life is gentle in her lessons if we let her be. Yes, if we resist, she’ll probably resort to a sludge hammer, but if we listen attentively, consciously, she might only tickle us with a feather. And I hope I can graciously choose to decline Pain in my life just as I do guilt, shame, and anger. It’s as easy as saying, “No thank you” to redefine our reality, and our lesson in Love, as pain-free… “

I know those words are still true. The strength did not seep from them, but from me.

And I suppose it was exactly that seeping of strength from our individual paths and persons that was our feather. But we were too busy with the moonstruck motions of lovers to be bothered to notice the threat that Life was dangling over our toes with a smirk.

So we unconsciously opted for the sludge hammer didn’t we? We glided by on the bliss of the union of our being until your subconscious left you awake in the dark for a week with a case of insomnia that would leave you no option but to confront consciousness. Till after a final fight with that which you did not want to admit, you waited for me to wake and when I did, took my hand to your heart and said:

“I have to go. I love you more than anything I ever have in this world. But I have sacrificed my path to walk with you along yours. And now I’ve lost myself in my love for you. But now my Truth, MY path, calls. So urgently that it keeps me awake through the night. I have to go. And I would ask you to come with me, but I already know the strength of your pull to your path. You must continue. And I must go find my own way again. And if you love me, you’ll let me go. Because this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do and I don’t have the strength to do it on my own. I need your help. Please. Help me go by letting me go.”

And so we let each other go — in the most bitter but beloved lesson of Unattached Love.

But still the sledgehammer’s bruises mark my heart.

And the tears continue to make trails down my cheeks.

And I feel the vacancy your hand left in mine.

Yet in the center of the heartache and under the swollen eyes of overworked tear ducts – I feel strength seeping back in. For in embracing my pain, I think I have somehow embraced my humanity. And perhaps it was THIS lesson that Life needed a sledgehammer to show me; That Love humbles us.

And that there is nothing more worthy of our humility.

And so in my empty hand, I clench onto my vision of you; On the top of a mountain, at the summit of YOUR path, at eye level with the eagle and its flight of freedom that inspires you so. And in seeing you not lost in love, but in your Inspiration, I suddenly understand. I instinctively and immediately throw my arms into the air and free also the creature of flight that I hold onto. And this time, my hand does not feel empty, but full of the freedom that it has released. And I clutch my heart instead in shared joy.

Ah ha.

Letting go of my attachment.

And ALSO my desire to hold on.

So THIS is unattached love.

…..

When I made the ring for you, I wrote this into my journal knowing that at some point I would give both to you;

“Just as this silver has melted and changed from one existence unto another, so has and shall our love; Born in one form – melted into another – re-birthed into yet another new shared existence. Eternal is that, as is all, Love. Continually intertwining like the very Knot of Eternity that brought us together. Having listened to our hearts and followed our unexplainable intuitions, our souls found and walked the paths that would meet in each other. And in this manner will our essences continue to weave, intertwine and dance. And these paths will naturally stray, for the space in the Knot is just as important as the Knot itself – balancing the dance and keeping the cycles of life and loving fresh and flowing. But always will these forms curve back toward each other. For we are not individual and straight lines living out solitary and linear existences, but momentary glimpses of a divinely chaotic and united cycle of love. In the Knot, there is neither end nor beginning, just as we knew each other before we met and know each other without end. And through each other, we shall not understand only one love, but Know all love, as each and every crossing of Life has the capacity to inspire. May we continue to listen attentively to the guidance of the inner voice of Truth, so the sooner that we may follow our individual paths to reunion.”

with undefended, and unattached love,

sol

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On The Mental Move

Monday, July 19th, 2004

Yesterday my mom called me a “modern monk.” And something about this comic vision (of myself in the robes of the Flying Nun) flinted around in my head sparking odd and incomplete inspirations. For I am beginning to suspect that much of Humanity is right now on the verge of coming out of the spiritual closet…but we just have absolute CRAP options for what to wear.

I’ve seen it in my semester abroad students. When I meet them at the airport, they are loaded with prescriptions drugs, histories of depression and self-abuse, and the terminology from a lifetime of psychiatric counseling. But after three months of physical travel (which in all and every case reflects and inspires a similar path of inner exploration) they are so light they actually appear to hover just about an inch off the ground. No, they have not suddenly “discovered” who they are (but neither will any of us ever, for we can never be confined to the physical reflection of ego in the mirror) BUT they have stopped repressing their deep spiritual inclinations, intuitions and inspirations and learned to question their existence with Wonder. For that is ALL that Spirituality is; Questioning the meaning of life and living with Wonder. When or why unanswerable questions became shameful, I’m not sure. But there is a Truth revolution on the stir that is sending the most susceptible of our age (the Youth) spinning in circles trying to decide head from tale. Cause there is great incongruency between what they are being told is true, and what they FEEL is true. They feel something greater rumbling inside of them, but they have no terminology to describe it because their psychiatrists, priests and parents have ignorantly pointed in all directions but one; the questioner’s heart.

What I’ve seen is that inner voices are knocking on inner doors with decreasing patience and increasing volume. The fires of inner creativity are tired of being subdued by the boring hand of Society. The social system put out a hand and offered us food, sex, money and power – but as we see by the news headlines careening across all our screens, is that our over-consumption of these elements has only resulted in the wildfire spread of obesity, STDs, reclusive greed and an arrogant and abusive hierarchy.

We are eating ourselves alive.

And we are still hungry.

It has recently come to my attention that many important people in my life are *right now* contemplating suicide.

And to them I say, “Well then YOU excite me. For your inner voice will not be buried alive. It’s refusing the slow death that so many have succumbed to. But yours will fight. It will bang on your inner doors and beg to breathe. It will scream and shout and stomp (do you feel this inner tantrum going on?). But it refuses to be contained by a coffin any longer. And it is willing to risk everything to escape. Your will to live is not less…but LOUDER. And if you have come to the point that you are willing to risk everything to die, then you are also at the point that you are willing to risk everything to Live. So welcome to the climax of your being. You have always had a choice. But at least now, you are conscious of your choosing.”

And then I remind them that regardless of what they choose, they will not escape either their problems or my love — in this life or the next.

*****

And aside from my usually life-salivating dribble…

Although I have been offered a position managing the café I work at, I have decided instead to follow the visions of my sleeping dreams and make my way to the coast where I have found a volunteer work placement.

On the physical and mental move first thing in the morning.

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