Mariposa Negra

Last night while we were eating dinner, the duena (landlady) came to talk to my host mom. The corner convenience store had just been robbed. My roomates and I stared around the table at one another, frozen to our seats. The store is not 75 feet from where we were sitting, and we had heard nothing. 

I thought about the night before, when I had walked there alone at 10:30pm, to buy apple juice. I remembered the bored-looking clerks, two of them, young men, who explained to me that one of the refrigerators was broken so if I wanted cold juice, I would have to buy apple, and not grape, as I had originally asked for. I thought about what could have happened if I had chosen to go a day later. 

We briefly considered not going out that night, but decided to go dancing anyway. Spent the night dancing (or in my case, trying to dance) to salsa at a club called Casbah under the arch.

Today at lunch, Dona marta told us that there is a black trash bag tied to the door of hte store in the shape of a bow or butterfly. The clerk had not just been robbed--he had been shot dead.

It seems to wrong that at the exact moment I was sitting down at dinner, discussing where to go dancing that night, less than half a black away someones life was slipping away.

There are 200 violent attacks, mostly robberies and mostly in the capital, on the camionetas (chicken buses) every day. Every other day or two the newspapers fill up with the count of people who had been shot dead on the buses that day. Last friday, there were 12. Yet every afternoon, the buses roll by, packed to the gills with passengers and laden with luggage tied to the roof.

Convento San Francisco, Antigua, Guatemala

A Wise Pronouncement

A few days ago I was sitting in a cigar and wine cafe in Antigua, waiting for J to buy a cigar for her boyfriend, when I picked up a random paper and saw the poem ¨For Instances¨ by Jorge Luis Borges.

There was a very, very old man sitting near the entrance of the cafe, by the street, having a glass of wine. I struck up a conversation with him. His name is Peter, and unapologetically, with a friendly smile and a sometimes distant gaze, he told me about his life.

I was born in Germany many years ago. I used to write Nazi propaganda for the government. I fought in the Nazi army in WWII, and in the American army in the Korean War. I was Paris´s first hippie, camping for a year in a park there with two girlfriends. Inexplicably, after Paris I went to the states and spent a year at Brigham Young University. I am not Mormon, but many people there tried to convert me (chuckles). After that I returned to Germany and completed law school. I ended up running for office in Germany, and spent the rest of my life until retirement as a politician. I have been many places in this world, and here, Antigua...this is my last place.

I passed Peter the Borges poem and asked him what he thought of it. I asked him, is this true?

Peter replied,
Well, I am old enough now to be able to make wise pronouncements about life. Yes, this poem is true. But I have something to add. You are young, and I want to give you advice, and it is this: Travel as much as you possibly can, all over the world, and make sure you do it while you are young. Because when you are old, traveling to certain places is no longer feasible.
And in 20 years, K, when you have traveled the world and return to California, you will meet some of your friends who had never left, and you will realize that they are lacking something.
It is so important to travel. Make it a goal of yours to live for a year or two in another country and to see as much as you can of different people and experience different cultures. Not so that you can see different things and discover different things--but so that in doing so you will find yourself.

Peter is obviously not a Nazi any longer. When he talked about his time as a Nazi, his eyes showed what i imagined to be a sort of surprised amusement at how far he had come. There was no remorse, as if he knew what he did was wrong but had come to terms with it long, long ago. He was telling me how much he loved Shanghai, and he was incredibly warm and kind to me. 

Sometimes I doubt whether traveling so much is a good idea. Not often, just sometimes. But were it not for my decision to travel, I would never have been there, on a street cafe speaking with a man nearing the end of his life, who had come here to die, and who wanted to tell me how important it is to keep seeing the world. It´s the little magic moments like this one that keep me moving.

For Instances

If I could I would live my life over.
This time I would try to make more mistakes.
I would try not to be so perfect, I would laugh more.
I would be so much sillier than I have been
that I would take few things seriously.
I would be less hygienic.
I would risk more, take more trips, contemplate
more sunsets, climb more mountains, ford more streams.
I would go to more places I have never been.
I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans.
I would have more real problems
and fewer imaginary ones.

I was one of those people who lived every minute of life
sensibly and productively. Of course I had moments of delight.
But if I were able to go back it would be
for good moments only.
Because, if you don't know it, that's what life's made of: moments.
Do not waste even this one.

I was a guy who never went anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot water bottle, an umbrella, and a poncho.
If I could live my life again I would travel more lightly.

If I could live again I would start going barefoot
when spring comes and not stop till fall's long gone.
I would walk down more side streets, contemplate more dawns,
and play with more children, if I had my life ahead of me again. But, come now. I am 85 years old. I know I am dying.

Tikal

I wake up at 3:30am to hike through the pitch-black jungle. all i can see is the person directly in front of me. i stumble over rocks and roots and slide around in mud. all i hear around me is the sound of insects, some fluttering by, some buzzing, and occasionally a gross crunching noise, which i suppose is one of the three inch long grubs with black heads that are all over the jungle floor. i live in fear of running into a spider web, as the spiders here are two to two and a half inches in diameter and are all sorts of bright orange and red colors. they look positively menacing.

As we progress further into the jungle, terrifying growling screaming noises start coming from the treetops. Howler monkeys. These things sound like a monster out of a horror movie--the screams they make in no way resemble what i previously thought monkeys would sound like.

our hike takes us to the base of Temple IV at Tikal, where I climb 230 feet to the top and sit silently, waiting for the dawn. all around me circles the chirping of insects and howling of monkeys. I can see nothing.

as the sky begins to lighten, the noise in the jungle gets louder, and all kinds of birds start chirping at once. i can barely make out the shifting veil of fog that surrounded the trees below. Temple IV is so tall that its top, where I am sitting, is above the canopy level of the jungle. 

i watch as the sky lightens even more and the trees all around me start becoming visible. the mist shifting through the trees is breathtaking. what other place could have served as the scene of the rebel base camp in star wars?

i am suddenly aware of how very, very far i am from home.