Espera.

I heard this poem on a podcast that I’ve been listening to lately, and I kinda liked it:

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

  -- David Whyte
      from Everything is Waiting for You 
     ©2003 Many Rivers Press

Here was the explanation the author gave in the podcast interview--

"...and that would be written in the form of myself giving myself a good telling-off. And reminding yourself what is first order, and reminding yourself how much energy you waste at the periphery, which disappears into nothingness, you know? And how much energy which is given at the center turns into this beautiful, surprising somethingness, which is inviting you on and bringing in all kinds of other people into your life to share the adventure at the same time."

Maybe you'd have to hear the whole podcast episode to really grasp what he was talking about there, but I took this poem, and the explanation that came with it, as a reminder to shut off my inner monologue every now and then and pay attention, be more present in my surroundings, and appreciate everything more. I just want to be here in this place, and to try experience everything that it is without having to add in any judgment of my own ability to function within it, or my personal impressions of other people within it. And to let go of any feelings of loneliness that may occur from episodes of cultural miscommunication. It’s all just stuff that’s in my head. And as we all have probably found at some point in our lives, our personal feelings and impressions about places and people and ourselves don’t always correspond to reality. In fact, most of the time it doesn’t. There’s always some distortion. And those distorted perceptions that come from being inside your head too much are often what hold us back from great experiences.

I don’t know if I’m making any sense. But I heard this poem and thought it was a good reminder to get out of my head and let go of the things that don't matter. And I thought maybe some of you out there might resonate with it too.

Thank you for entertaining my more abstract thoughts. I’ll now move on to more normal sounding blog-post type updates.

Not too much has been happening lately—just enjoying the nice weather we’ve had lately. Despite the rainy season being practically here, it hasn’t been too cloudy or rainy in the last week or so, and there were a couple days where we actually had a few good sunsets, which I either enjoy by taking the extra-long way home along the lake after work, or I head straight home to watch it from the solitude of my rooftop.

I finally started taking Spanish lessons. It’s just one-on-one tutoring basically, and I’ve decided to go twice a week, just to brush up on my grammar. To be honest, I don’t think the lessons will help improve my fluency much because it’s a very slow and methodical teaching style. I was a little impatient with that at first, but I think it will help me improve at learning the grammatically correct and incorrect ways of saying things, and then having conversations with people helps me with everything else. So I think it’ll be worth it in the end.

I spent some time with a bunch of Spaniards yesterday though, and oh my god, their Spanish is so different. My friend Karyn, the other intern at MG, has roommates who have friends who live in this really pretty area near the lake, and they were having a lunch party thing on Saturday so she invited me along. The people who live in the house are from Spain and invited a bunch of other Spaniards, and then there were a few Americans, and a few Guatemalans. I realized that I cannot understand Spanish from Spain to save my life. Maybe I could figure it out if I spent some time in Spain, but I’m so used to Guatemalan Spanish now that it was all nearly unintelligible to me. When Guatemalans speak, it’s very clear and every syllable is pronounced and it’s much easier for me to understand what’s going on around me. With the Spaniards, and my coworker Laura from Venezuela, everything sounds much faster, more mumbled, and they don’t always pronounce every syllable so it’s hard for me to distinguish words from one another. I’ll admit it sounds really pretty to hear them speak, but as far as trying to understand them, I gave up after about an hour. Instead of hanging out with the adults, I hung out with the Guatemalan children that were there, because they were adorable and I feel like our levels of vocabulary and conversation skills were similar. So I had a little more fun with that. They were telling me jokes and riddles in Spanish and I tried to guess the answers, and I learned a few fun Spanish puns and then they taught me how to dance. It was fun, and educational. And I had a lot of Sangria and delicious food, so I was content with my day.

Riddle time:

Q: ¿Qué es una comida que espera?

A: Es pera.

Lolz. They had tons of those, but right now that’s the only one I can remember. I probably wrote that incorrectly. I don't know.

Other happenings--I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, since I haven’t posted in a while, but a little over a week ago I got to visit another one of MG’s cooperatives. It was in a really beautiful area, near a city called Nahuala, about an hour and a half by bus from Panajachel. The purpose of the meeting was to get a new community to join Mercado Global. Once again, the whole meeting was in an indigenous language, so I didn’t understand anything that was going on until later when we left and it all was explained to me, but it’s always interesting for me to observe these meetings anyway. I like seeing how things are done out in the communities where all the magic happens, rather in the office, where all I see is donations coming in. When I go out on these visits, I get to see what those donations can make happen, and it’s quite a bit more interesting to me than what I do in the office.

Other than that, right now we’re doing a lot of planning for an organized donor trip to come down for a week at the end of June with their daughters who are in high school. A “mother-daughter trip”, which is pretty cute. I don’t know how much of that trip I’ll be tagging along on, and how much I’ll be in the office that week. I hope I don’t have to spend every waking minute with them, but I’m kind of crossing my fingers for a free trip to Antigua out of the deal, because any activities I attend will be reimbursed. Plus, I was the one who organized the Antigua tour and scored us an awesome deal+discount, and on a Sunday to boot, so I hope I get to go. It’ll be a busy week though, but it should be fun.

But before any of that, my parents are visiting, which I’m very excited about! We’re going to Tikal, an area with a lot of ancient Mayan ruins, for two days, the 28^th and 29^th of this month, and then spending a few days here in Panajachel. I can’t wait.

It’s crazy that I’ve now been here over a month! It went by so fast, as things like this tend to. I miss everyone back home, and hope you’re all doing well. Congrats to everyone who just graduated! Good luck landing full time jobs or grad schools or med schools or whatever’s next—I’m definitely still in that boat with you. And good luck to everyone who still has a semester or two left, hope you all enjoy the summer!

Much love.