Good to Be Working Again, Part II

I commuted from San Marcos for my first half week of work, delaying my move to Tzununa because I met a beautiful woman and wanted to stay nearby to her. By the time Saturday came, I was ready to haul my shit one village over and see how things played out with the girl having a bit of distance between us. There was certainly already some distance between her mindset and mine but that made it interesting.


My first night in Tzununa was awful. Thinking back on my worst nights from all my time spent traveling, this was up there in real shitty ones. It commenced while I was reading in the afternoon. I started Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, which I would recommend to some of my male friends and Michelle Railsback. Music began to blare. There's a church next to the hotel. In preparation for the band a couple hours later, they played song after song way too loud. They had mounted a bullhorn-looking speaker, as if the rest of the amps weren't enough, on the church roof pointing at the center of town right through my hotel room. I read for a while and was actually able to get into the book. Loud music. I took a long walk, bought groceries, and came back. Loud music. I cooked dinner, ate, and cleaned up. Loud music. I read more and got tired and fell asleep. As soon as I got under the covers, I became allergic to the bed. There's two blankets but no sheet. Nothing seems dirty, in fact, I'm not sure anyone's ever stayed in this room, but I would really prefer a sheet.


I woke up at some unknown time later. It was obviously still dark, The music was still blaring. My nose is an itchy, snotty mess. I'm groggy and very unhappy. A bare bulb burning out on the porch feels like an arc welder against my retinas as I search for something to blow my nose into.


I realize when I step out to the toilet that it's no longer the church next to the hotel but the church behind the hotel. I don't know which way their speaker is pointed, but I'm sure their wall of amps is facing me. It's far too loud.


I don't have any tissues, so I use the toilet paper in the room to angrily wipe the snot from my face. My nose will fare worse for this. Calm down. Be angry but wipe your nose gently. It's rough toilet paper. But if you don't wipe with some force, most of the snot remains on the face and mustache. There's no trash can in this horrible room, so I fling each saturated clump to the wall forming a pile that will further depress me in the morning.


This sucks. This reminds me of the torture scene in Zero Dark Thirty. If anyone ever wants to torture me, use the music and I'll probably break. At the end of each song, I pray it was the last, but for hours on end, my prayers have been shat on. OK, what can I do? I don't know why, but that light is killing me. I would certainly trade in the fancy one-way mirrored windows for some regular windows and a curtain. I string up my towel and that's a big help but unfortunately that's it for improvement. It's funny to think about what would happen if I went over to the church and asked them to turn their music down, or off, because I'm trying to sleep and also I'm not feeling 100%.


There's one other hotel in town. Not a hotel like in a hotel sense with reception, etc., but a few extra rooms at a family's house where you can stay if you give them money. Walking up there now, where I'll still be able to hear this music, if not as loud, at this unknown hour on a Saturday night seems out of the question.


Then there's the bed. I can't just become unallergic to this bed the same as the mattress won't magically become thicker and more even. I posit that if I put a couple shirts on and keep the blankets near my waist, it may ease the reaction. It helped enough to fall asleep after a while.


I woke up a bit after sunrise and reveled in the lack of blasting music. I opened up my book and read a few pages when the music started up again. Luckily, the responsible church was off in the distance and the music came in at a now seemingly amateur volume.


Back to work tomorrow. Thursday, we erected the scaffolding using bamboo and wire. There are two crews on site: Walter's and Santiago's. Walter is doing the bamboo so I'm with him and Gerson has been brought in specially by the architect Charlie for his bamboo experience. In places, two horizontal bamboo rods side by side will have a plank laid over and screwed in to form a decent platform. Gerson wanted to walk across one of the single rods that spanned about 10-ft between two platformed areas. He simply walked across. If he fell one way, it would be 20-ft down to hard, sandy, rocky earth and if he fell the other way, it would be 16-ft down to a stone stairway. He made it each time he did it.


Walter really welcomed me into his group right away. He's the 23 year old crew chief who wear s a neon green tank top with “Nudist on Strike” painted on. He involved me and the rest of the guys soon followed suit. It also helped that I joined in hauling bamboo. They help out when I need it, kind-spirited and eager to show off their talents and skills. I hear a lot of “Cuidado Maximo”.


The guys start at seven and take a half-hour for breakfast at 10. Their wives, or maybe mothers, sisters, aunts, or cousins bring their warm food to the site sometime before. It's always a stack of tortillas and something to put on them. We've been breakfasting standing up around a 55-gallon drum and everyone shares. The first day I couldn't scrape much together so I only brought cold tortillas. Walter wouldn't allow that as cold tortillas need either be heated up or given to the chuchos, so I shared in warm tortillas topped with various ramens, spaghettis, black beans and even a bowl of shrimp in tomato sauce. Day 2, I brought some leftover pasta and before I knew it, forks were flying over to give it a try and I felt officially in.


I was hoping working the construction gig would include built-in Spanish practice, but unfortunately for me, it's mostly Kaqchikel spoken on site. Kaqchikel is difficult and almost completely unwritten. I can't repeat a short phrase correctly. I try to repeat the sounds that seem like the important ones to me, but the breathy noises and different mouth action sounds carry great importance as well. I'm not sure how to jump into Kaqchikel but I wish I did.  Luckily, the local children are happy to repeat a phrase as many as 16 times in a row finding great entertainment in my repeated, failed attempts to pronounce correctly.  We worked with trying to nail down the names of two villages above Tzununa up in the hills: Sanxshjomelxsh and Pajomelxsh.



Back on the site, I experienced sheer horror after we hoisted a 7-meter bamboo to stand vertically atop the 2^nd level scaffold. Now out of our reach, Walter and Samuel hugged their bodies into the beam and the beam it would be wired to. I craned my neck looking upward remaining ready to dive out of the way as the rod swayed this way and that in the wind. We don't have a crane or anything like that. We do have a drill. A drill and wire snips and a handmade ladder. It's good to be working again, half days of course.  

Merry Christmas from the Heart of the Mayan World

Happy Holidays and New Year!

It does feel a bit odd to experience the Christmas Season around here.  It's beautiful during these days of the windy season and long-sleeved shirts are only necessary in the evenings when the air carries the faintest touch of a real chill.  Ninety something percent of the local population here has never seen snow.

The locals are excited for Christmas and so am I.  I'm very excited for Christmas to come, and go, so the people can take their lights down.  Very popular here are 'music lights'.  These are Christmas lights with a built in loop of Christmas songs that emit in high-pitched terrible beeping tones that sound like the ringtone from the first, and worst, cell phone ever.  There is an (unused) option to have the lights go with no music, which is great, but there is also the option to play the loop in double-time, not so great.  As I sleep, at the Mirador, I can hear a mixture of two sets of music lights.  In fact, muddling up Frosty and Rudolph may be better than each alone.  As I write this on 21 Dec, I think I can manage four more nights and trust these people to dismantle all their noise-making decorations promptly on Christmas Day.

___________

I feel as though at times I'm being unfair to Guatemala here at The Reprieve Report by speaking about the country with a voice that doesn't match my real attitude.  I write a lot about the funnyisms, sillyisms, oddisms, frustratisms, et ceteraisms, of the land and I may exaggerate certain things (though not much).  While it seems like a completely different world from the land of my upbringing, I absolutely love it here.  The differences make it fun and it's simply more free and less rigid.  It's a dirt poor country in an extreme environment but there is happiness in the people that would rival that of people anywhere, rich or poor.  You learn a ton daily simply by virtue of your presence here.  The landscape is stunningly beautiful and seems to magically change if you walk, or just wait, ten minutes.  After three months around this Lake Atitlan, I'm scratching the surface of a real knowledge base of its contours and villages happy to succumb to its temptation to stay and make a life here.  I encourage anyone thinking about visiting to do so.  I can help with arrangements around the lake and the rest of the country has plenty to offer all very affordable and not nearly as dangerous as books and the internet make it seem.

I'm also excited to pass into a new year 'overseas', which I've never before done.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, happy other holidays and a very healthy New Year!!

Good to Be Working Again, Part I

11.20.13

It's good to be doing something again. I'm volunteering, for now, so I wouldn't dare set an alarm, but I usually wake up at or before daybreak, around six, and work doesn't start til seven.

My first impressions of Tzununa after half a week of work were good. It's a simple, poor village much like the others, but the people in each village have a distinct look in their faces and skin and a unique, traditional style of dress that the women still wear every day. Here in Tzununa, the base is black. I like it a lot. There are often diamonds or lines stitched in a string in a low contrast color, like a grey. With brighter, more colorful threads, they stitch in lines of other shapes or flowers or birds. The bright colors used here on the skirts and shirt collars are mostly a mix of blues, greens and aquas. I've only been here for a few days, but I'm enjoying the look. The women seem to have attitudes to match their snazz uniforms. Serious and stern: the black. But lighthearted, friendly and kind: the blues and greens.

It's nice to be working again.  Work is the construction of a three-story bamboo hotel here in Tzununa. The ground level has already been built up with stones. Stones are free except for the paying the men who gather them from the river and haul them to the site on their backs. They use a bag and rope system with a strap that goes around and over the forehead. A group will help each other get loaded up, except I suppose the last guy does it on his own. They carry incredible weights, especially for the size of the men, great distances. You have the guys who hike up the mountain, chop up firewood and load it on their backs with a similar head-rope system. They hike steep, rocky trails several thousand feet down. Wellies are common, busted up shoes are common and some old dudes do it barefoot. Rarely does a guy do it in the type of shoes I would wear walking the same trails with a small backpack. Those guys haul downhill.

Construction guys haul shit uphill. It's convenient and comforting to know with certainty that the smallest guy in any crew is well stronger than me. When I'm cringing through a task and give the load over to the small guy, I'm assured that if I was able to do it at all, he'll do it without cringing. After hauling a full load a good distance, maybe 20 minutes uphill, the workers release the load slowly and gradually and sit to rest for at least five minutes. One sight at the site made a big load easily quantifiable. A guy carried up two 50-kg bags of cement at a time. 220 lbs. Maybe it doesn't sound like that much, but imagine giving a 220-lb woman a 15-minute piggyback ride up a mountain. Imagine doing it in flop-flops.

Day 1 involved moving the bamboo up from the road to the site. Handling the six-inch thick, 20-ft length or bamboo was more a challenge of balance and maneuvering than a test of bearing a great weight. I got the hang of it and it was actually harder on Day 2 when those muscles behind the collar bones were so sore that reloading them with more stick was painful.

So it's nice to be working again. I've had two weeks off since my last vacation ended trekking in the Western Highlands. I spent the morning hours of most of that time working on the writing of an instructional, and partly anecdotal, book about travel photography for people who want to stop taking such horrible pictures and showing them to me. I spent the afternoons doing a variety of things that together constitute general fucking off. My enthusiasm for the writing waned after my own camera briefly went swimming in the rio above San Marcos at the little pool where the trail goes over the huge rock. This was the day after I wrote the part about keeping your gear dry and protected. A little probably won't hurt, but try to keep it dry. You can't take pictures if your camera breaks. My camera is fucked. A guy in Panajachel is going to look at it. The last guy I let look at something fixed it. It was this $11 Casio alarm clock. All the liquid crystal displays stopped displaying and the little light wouldn't turn off. I was going to be American about it and toss the thing in the garbage. Just for shits, I brought it to the Casio Authorized Dealer Specialist that happened to be next to the hotel in Huehuetenango. This was probably the third highlight from Huehue after a really good torta at the square and finding an XL J. Crew button-neck hoody at a used clothing store.

The owner took the job seriously. He kept it simple stupid; batteries were his first suggestion for the cure. I pointed out the illumination yet hiding in the daylight so he went to work cracking it open, spraying some stuff on the circuit board and viola. What was wrong? It's a “bad machine”. The camera is seemingly fucked, but I'm gonna let this other guy look. His shop is down a hall through a tienda past a couple bedrooms and you never know. I wish I could still take pictures. But I have a lot of other stuff on my mind and it certainly feels nice walking around with no valuable stuff. I'll be excited to finish the book a bit down the road and maybe with some fresh photos.

TBC

Machete Count

1

Sorry for the contentless check-ins.  I´ll try to work up something for the Report as soon as is humanly possible or as soon as I have time or as soon as I feel like it or sometime.  This reminds of both Catch-22, which I´m reading (along side the biography, Bonhoeffer) and Guatemala in general.  Just two days ago I had the following conversation, joined in progress and translated from the crappy Spanish, at a new hotel with the grandfather-aged owner, Diego:

Diego:  For the week, its 200 Quetzales.
Me:  Great. And is there a kitchen I can use?
Diego:  No. Sadly, there´s no kitchen.
Me:  Ohhhh, hmm, it would be a lot better if there was a kitchen.
Diego:  You´d like a kitchen?
Me:  Yes, I´d like to be able to prepare some meals here.
Diego:  There´s a kitchen.  Come with me.

He takes me down one flight of steps into his family´s compound/comlplex and shows us into a fully outfitted kitchen.  Whoever used to use this kitchen is not using it.

Me:  Oh, this is excellent.  This will do just fine.
Diego:  You can cook with firewood on this stove.
Me:  Oh, firewood...What about that stove? (pointing to a normal-looking gas or electric stove/oven)
Diego:  Oh, that stove.  Noooo.  That stove doesn´t work.
Me:  It doesn´t work?
Diego:  It doesn´t have gas.
Me:  I could get a tank of gas for it.  I may be here long enough.
Diego:  You could get a tank of gas but the stove doesn´t work.
Me:  Oh, it doesn´t work.
Diego:  Nope.  Do you want to use it?
Me:  Yes, I´d like to use it.
Diego:  Well you could use it, but it doesn´t work.
Me:  I´ll take the room.  

Sombrero Count

2

La Pala Grande 11.8.13

I took off for Pala Grande without swim trunks.  I had a warm soak at La Barranquita yesterday.  There´s a couple hot spring baths there built into the hill with stone and cement.  There´d be a view of a strong 70ft waterfall if not for a sheet of corrugated aluminum that acts as wall for spray, I guess.  Pipes protrude from the rock face letting the hot, sulfurous spring water fall into the tubs and, keeping a fresh, hot supply, the tubs act as tributaries into the main stream, where the waterfall is.  I had the place to myself for 25 minutes lying in the warmer tub with a comfortable pillow made of rock.

Continuing five minutes down the road, I reached the 300 stairs down to Payeshu.  There I found more hot baths, including a tub of water actually boiling up from the earth.  These were more crowded with local Quiche folks and since I had just soaked and was unsure of the routine at this more popular spot, I simply rested awhile doing my best not to look creepy and took deep breaths in preparation for the stair climb.

I wasn´t sure what exactly the Pala Grande was when I left, but I knew it involved a waterfall.  I relished the idea of taking a walk not carrying anything, feeling assured in the fact that my black boxer shorts would serve as coverage in the event of an irresistable swimming opportunity.  I was light with no heavy pack and planned on making the 2k walk, having a look at the falls, and turning around and coming back to carry on in my book, Children of Sanchez.  I really wanted to finish Consuelo´s final segment of this five-person combined autobiography.  I mean, it was no wonder Papa threw her out of house and no one liked her because in addition to being winy, sickly and bossy, she also attacked Delilah, the widower Papa´s current mistress.  Everyone else pretty much got along if you count yelling, screaming, insulting, beating, fighting, whoring and treachery.  I felt good walking up Calle 3A.  I had on my sneaker sandals with my Barca socks and my brand new hat from the big Wednesday market that morning.  It´s kind of a cross between a cowboy hat and something a little classier with a smaller brim.  It´s an earthy tan.  If I had known what I was in for that afternoon, I´d have worn my safari hat and my real shoes.

I followed multiple directions of ´recto´ until I topped the hill near the cell phone tower.  After a good-sized sleeping chucho woke up and got real angry at me, a road branched off to the right.  There was a sign for Pala Grande but in the traditional Gaute style, someone had placed an even bigger sign just in front of it.  Descending into the valley, I noticed the climate and flora change.  There were riscos here and there, natural stalagmites caused by erosion, not by dripping.  It was beautiful and as I descended further into the valley, I saw a small foot bridge over a stream and a summer-campy kind of picnic table grove but with no picnic tables.  I carried on down the road and came to another bridge.

Always wanting to get as near as possible to the water, I crossed the bridge and took a dirt trail, or camino, to the left.  Moments later, I was able to drop down about 12-feet into the canyon where the stream came through.  Sunlight poked in and lit up spots of the rocks, moss, and skim-milky water.  I carried on up the camino which soon became narrow to pass through some homes.  Here I hesitated for a second before carrying on.  I remembered that caminos often get narrow and pass near people´s home and also I just stopped being a bitch.  Five kids in the trail saw me and I wondered how many gringos had casually strolled up this camino  next to their house.  Four little ones got excited and ran toward the house but the oldest was more interested in getting his kite airborne than paying attention to me. When asked, he casually told me I could reach the bridge further up by going on up the trail.

Moments later, the bridge came up.  The pool beneath it emptied into the pool beneath that via a seven foot waterfall that was just as wide.  One could easily wade in to the small pool beneath the falls before the stream narrowed and turned back into shallow rapids.  The decision to enter the water here was made as soon as I saw the site and the obvious goal was to take a seat inside, behind the stout, powerful falls.  I would´ve been visible, in my black boxers, from the bridge about 30ft back and 20ft up if anyone at all had been around.  I waded carefully into the cold water realizing it never got more than knee-deep.  Standing just before the falls, I pondered how powerful the water would feel.  Testing the gravity with my fingertips caused a spray of water to shower my yet dry face and chest with a shocking blast of cold.  Tough part over, I again tested the force with my head.  Realizing I would not be crushed by the water, I plopped down beneath the falls.  While the ergonomics of the seat were comfortable, it was so loud, intense and still freezing in there that I could only manage to stay under for a few seconds.  I popped out clapping my hands very excited then turned to see two local men watching from the bridge.  Exiting the water, I dried off happy in the spackled sun considering this fine spot on the Earth.

All dressed, escaping the onslaught of the coffee flies at my ankles, I worked my way up the stream on small paths.  I had a cliff-view over the canyon in a spot where the stream S-curved and at the closer crest, a colorfully dressed woman worked on her wash.  My camera, or memory card rather, is on vacation for a few days before being reformatted, so I apologize for the lack of art herein.  Further up the camino, I paused before taking a few steps back toward the water between the outhouse and chicken coop of someone´s property.  I heard one, lone bark from an unseen chucho.  This was a calm bark.  To me, this chucho was saying ¨Gringo, I don´t know you but I´m here and I see you but you don´t see me.  You're move¨  It wasn´t aggressive or threatening, just a hello really.  I tipped my king over and retreated to the camino with no further sounds from the chucho and saw a woman moving by the house above.  She said something incomprehensible to me and I greeted her with ¨Buenas Tardes¨.  She did her quick spiel and I´m really not sure if what she was saying was ¨Get out of here quick, you Gringo fuck, we´ve got chuchos!¨ or ¨Careful, young man.  You are likely to encounter some unfriendly chuchos and you would be best to hasten along the camino out of their territory.  Farewell!¨  She pointed me along the way I was already going, so I went, though not really hastening.  This seemed a good time to gather up a chucho stick but selection wasn´t great.  The first stick I grabbed was a good, strong switch and not too heavy, but really too curved for effectively and efficiently thwacking at chuchos.  I traded that one in for a straight one at first chance, slicing off some small branches with my pocket knife and smoothing out the grip.  I wouldn´t want to add to the inconvenience of a chucho attack a blistered hand.

Untested by any chuchos, I peaked a small hump to see a dirt road and a man sitting on a rock at the trail´s edge.  I viewed him in profile and saw him before he saw me.  His caballero hat was on his knee exposing a bald head with a scraggly horseshoe of hair around the sides.  I first noticed the machete, of course, and that this man wore decent, outdoorsy boots, fairly uncommon of locals.  I´m sure they were at least two sizes too large.  I greeted him from 25ft away, and when he responded I deemed him safe enough to move closer.  He summoned me to sit with him on the rock, not an uncommon request, and I obliged.  This rock was in the loveseat family so we were now sitting very close and no one else was anywhere near.

He proceeded to tell me that he was the dueño, which I understand to mean owner or boss.  He seemed to me to be implying that this was his land and I was intruding.  He came off fairly angry.  I figured he had been alerted to my presence and sat and waited where he knew I would show up.  I felt my pulse begin to rise but tried to remain calm as were sitting hip to hip.  He took out a pad and began to write things down, like to name of the barrio and that he was the propietario.  I calmed down as I began to realize he was some sort of term sheriff/mayor figure for the Barrio Santa Ana and I hadn´t done anything wrong.  This man, Silverio, was not dangerous, but he was raving mad.  Picture a cross between Ben Kingsley from Ghandi and Ben Kingsley from House of Sand and Fog and nuts.   I took out my book to write down his name.  I wrote Silverio in my hand then passed the book and pen to him.  I began to chuckle somewhat uncontrollably as I saw what he was writing.  He wrote his name and address, using up the whole page, including the country and even continent and tried my best to conceal my laughter when he finished and returned the book and looked up.

Mixing Spanish with Quiche, mystery facial contortions and hand symbols, he told me he lived deeper into the mountains and there was a nice mirador on the way to his property.  My diagnosis of harmless whack-job already made, I told him I´d be happy to take a walk with him and we set off.  Wishing I had some water, I still enjoyed carrying nothing while he wore a big costale-material backpack full of who knows what and toted that.  I was looking forward to the mirador, but deep down I knew I was hoping to see this guy´s house and see if there was any wife or kids to speak of  He made a good pace up but I was able to keep up for now.  He´d suggest which roads and trails were safe to take and which ones weren´t due to ladrones and chuchos by contorting his lips and face in different ways.  Not interested in his instructions, I wondered whether everything between his exposed teeth was old food or an actual dental arrangement.

Truth be told, the mirador was quite spectacular.  We could see very, very far from here.  Here, and in other spots, he would ask me if I had really seen what he was showing me by pointing to the site and then pointing to me then pulling down his lower eyelid a couple times.  It was a little sickening.  He pointed out the directions of Xela(Quetzaltenango), Totonicapan, Huehuetenango and La Frontera de Mexico out beyond Huehue.  It made me feel safe again when he now told me how I could get back from there via the baths but also offered to show me his house.  He answered that the house was five minutes away and I agreed to go.  Wanting to be able to find my way back, I wanted to nail down a couple navigational details, but he was now too excited and clamped painfully onto my upper arm to pull me along.  The third time he did it I realized I reflexively pulled my arm away from his kung fu grip.

He set off on a trot downhill toward his home and I stopped to urinate without telling him.  He realized I had fallen behind and yelled at me to ¨vamos!¨.  Again setting off running, we passed over several small roads and trail splits and I knew I´d never be able to find my way back this way alone.  We reached the house, a nondescript cement double shack with a little grassy courtyard in between.  After pulling a beautiful flower and presenting it to me, Silverio rolled up and pinned the chainlink fence covering the entry to the courtyard.  He undid the huge padlock to the house and opened up.  It was a dark, dusty shithole.  No wife or kids to speak of.  It didn´t get too much better when he opened a couple windows but it did allow me to see a little more.  It was disarray, stuff was strewn all about.  I saw a curling bar at the far end.  He excitedly showed me everything and demanded ¨Esta bueno?¨.  My friends know me as pretty honest and I wanted to say ¨Look, Silverio, I think this place could use a bit of tidying up and organization¨, but instead I told him it was nice.  He began to fart audibly at will and one of them was so long and drawn out that it outlasted his sentence creating an awkwardness much like the interview scene in the film Step-Brothers, but of intercontinental proportions.  He did have a nice table that would´ve been great for a dinner for four or maybe even six.  Silverio must have, not too recently, decided it would make better use as a caballero hat rack so he had it upside-down.  It held a hat each for three legs and the fourth was on his head.  This was the only actual interior design he had implemented besides throwing whatever wherever.

The outdoors, on the other hand, was magnificent.  He owned 32 acuerdas and had beautiful corn, fields of wildflowers, and a great view of his valley.  I gathered up my flower and chucho stick and told him I should really hit the road because it was, truthfully, getting late and I had a decent walk back.  He didn´t resist too strongly.  We had a good amount of miscommunication regarding my way out, but then he warned that on the path I wanted to take there was ¨mucho chucho¨.  He ran back to grab his machete and came with me for a spell, which I was hoping he would.  I was pretty happy to get away from him but glad I´d experienced his tour and I think he was happy with it as well.  Later, I decided what I first thought was anger at the trail edge was strong, serious pride.  This is where he was born back in 1955 and now he was an authority figure and he had every right to have excessive pride in this beautiful land.  Maybe my new hat caused him to treat me very seriously.  At home, I can detect differences in how I´m treated by strangers with respect to how long it´s been since I shaved.  When I travel, a hat can change things.  My trusty safari hat usually reads very friendly to strangers and I´m still gauging how the new hat comes off.

I was excited to give the lovely flower to a nice señorita, but I got nervous a couple times and ended up giving it to a nice family on the steps down to the baths.  I found the road there with instructions from a friendly young man and was a bit of a spectacle to locals walking the road as a casual, lone Gringo.  Hours and miles since beginning, I finally came the La Pala Grande, where another waterfall fell near the hot pools.  These were, again, quite crowded, and I simply passed through.  The Quiche men, women and kids bathe together.  The women wear bath dresses and a pair of boobs or some man ass may pop out here and there but it doesn't cause much of a stir.

I passed through the bath area and paced myself up the steps on the other side.  Eventually, I reached the road.  Just across the way is where I had originally gone left.  Pleased with my wrong turn, I made the climb back up over the ridge, enjoying some agua pura from a plastic pouch.  Descending back into the center of Momostenango, I watched as the last of the sunlight crawled up away from the tops of the taller buildings.  I approached a fried chicken stand directly (Q7, with fries) for a nice appetizer before the real dinner.  My Spanish suffered ordering dinner as I thought ahead to that night´s sleep and a nice, hot soak early the next morning.

Todos Santos Cuchumatan to San Juan Atitan Hike 11.4.13

After four nights in Todos Santos, I left on foot early in the morning yesterday for the 10-mile walk to the village San Juan Atitan.  I've been waking up very early, usually just before dawn, because I've kept my sleep schedule from the Yoga Forest as well as all the roosters and turkeys sounding off.  People also shoot very loud bombs into the sky and the last few days being Todos Santos' biggest holiday of the year, they begin shooting these bombs quite early in the morning.

I stopped for some breakfast of fruit and breads after the first big climb out of Todos Santos by the cell tower.  The options were left, right or straight and I wasn't sure what to do, but as keeps happening, someone came along at just the right time.  A friendly local man was going the opposite way with his wife and son and pointed me where I needed to go.  While we were talking, I finished my banano and flung the peel into the brush.  As he was leaving, he asked for ´¿un banano, por mi hijo?´.  I had bought two bananos the previous day because I like having two bananos and I knew I would want to eat two bananos, but I couldn't refuse so I parted with my second banano.  ´Bueno, un regalo¨, a gift.  No really, I was happy to do it.  I set off for lower ground as the weather took a rapid change for the worse but stopped soon later for my ¨morning glory¨ a few steps off the trail.  I covered my offering with an elegant and natural-looking arrangement of very long, red pine needles and as I walked off,.the sun was shining again.

    I passed this chucho along the way.  In the excitement of the long holiday weekend, someone had    painted him blue.

I flirted with the edge of the cloud forest for some time before the cloud finally enveloped me and I spent most of the walk in very low visibility.  I'm sure the view would've been lovely but it was also nice in the cloud with the road and my own thoughts.  I stopped for lunch on the cement covering of a municipal water intake.  Just after sitting down, a chucho came by alone, threw me a quick glance, sipped from the stream over the road, and continued on.  15 minutes later, I looked up to see two more chuchos in the road staring at me statuesque.  They were reading me, judging me, deciding whether or not to come beg for food.  There certainly wasn't any meat but rather only canned refried black beans on bread or leftover tortilla and some fruit.  I should note here that passion fruit is delicious and is now in my regular repertoire. It is extremely tasty, juicy and crunchy all while very neat and easy to open.  Its the design a pomegranate should've been given.  One chucho decided it wasn't worth it, sipped from the stream, and continued on.  The last chucho, the smaller one and the one who may have had to try harder for his calories, waited it out.  I was staring into the eyes of the chucho, each of us sizing up the other, when I had to avert my glance to see who was now coming down the road.

In front was a caballo loaded down with lleña, or firewood.  A medium-aged man and his grandson were driving the caballo.  The caballo carried on by himself because the niño was wapping the side of his ass with a twig but the older man asked me ¨¿Para donde?¨ and we began to chat while the niño played in the small stream.  Like just about everyone, the man was extremely friendly and after a while, he did ask after his other two chuchos.  I took their photo which is a real testament to how cloudy it was; they were only about 6 feet away when photographed.

I walked another hour and met a crossroads and was unsure which road to take.  While I pondered and again reviewed my vague map/directions, another lleña toting caballo approached, this one driven by a lone 13-year old.  He pointed me down the road I would've guessed and we walked together for a while.  He made it home and I carried on.  I was feeling good and strong, walking downhill through the outskirts of my destination pueblo.  I was summoned ¨Venga!¨ by a group of about seven young men and boys under a little hut by the roadside.  I was a bit past but when I noticed the oldest was holding a pool cue and there was a pool table beneath the hut roof, I made a sharp turn for their hut.  I was asked in Spanish if I played (yes) and if I wanted to play (yes) and was told to put down my mochila.  When I said ¨pool¨, they all almost fell apart laughing and I thenceforth was confused by their humor because when I broke (pretty decent break), they all laughed and when I made a good shot in, they all laughed, but when I missed it was silence.  As you can see in the photo, this hut was built for mountain Guatemaltecos and it was not over designed my any stretch.  I bumped my head more times than I bothered to count and each time, they all laughed.  I took two out of three off the first guy but the next guy, the traditionally dressed man photo-center, beat me twice before I resumed my descent.  The table was not regulation and I blame my loss on the strange curves and nuances and have to place each loss under protest or at least chalk them up to home court advantage.



Thankfully, the sky opened up as I rode down from the village to the Pan-American Highway for the bus into Huehuetenango.  It was a toss up between microbus and pickup and I'm glad which one came because standing up in the back of a pickup truck is a great way to make a 3000-foot descent surrounded by gorgeous mountain faces.

Happy Halloween from La Torre

La Torre solo peak bag day.

La Torre useless statistic: highest non-volcanic peak in C. America.  12,XXX ft

Ditched my friends.

Tipico Breakfast: Rice, Beans, Egg, Tortilla, Red Soupy Sauce, Q15.

Microbus to La Ventosa: Q10

Dropped by tienda where men in traditional dress were gulping beer by their horses.  Bought water and directions from tienda.  Turned to set off when old man approached me with family-size bottle of Mezcal and offered me a shot.  Celebration mañana.  I knock it back no chaser and set off.  Adios.  Easy trail for a while navigation-wise.  Opens up.  Beautiful.  Windy, hearty, mossy.  Low junipers or some such tree and rock.  I meander skirting what I think is my destination peak but there's a couple other maybes and just when I wish I had someone to ask I spot a shepherding couple about 300m away.   I draw nearer and turn toward them going about 100m away from my peak.  He approaches me while the wife hangs back.  Marcelino, I think, I'm about 65% on that name.  Typical Guatemalan Mam.  Mam wear: red pants with white and blue shirt with snazz collar and extremely friendly.  I was hoping for a broad portrait scape of him amidst the sheep on the descent but he vanished, no dice.  Intimate photoshoot with a normally skittish lizard.  Peak is cool and my hour and a half there was spent alone.  Clouds change rapidly around me but at this moment I am in bright sun with the thin air of 12.000ft.  The most pleasant 12,000ft you ever saw.  Breeze or stillness.  Warmth, quiet, calm.  2 bananos down, peels flung forward to their death over the rock.  Crunchy, light cookie breads.  2 oranges.  Bready.  Seltzer, es posible!!  Mostly I've been finding ways to fill my 2L with agua pura.  If I have to buy water, buy seltzer.

Spanish Lesson I

´´
If the verb in the main clause is in the present indicative or future or present perfect indicative or imperative, the present subjunctive or present perfect subjunctive is used in the dependent clause--provided, of course, that there is some element that requires the use of the subjunctive.
``

Quoted from:
Spanish Verbs, 2nd Edition; Kendris, Christopher; Barrons, 2001, New York

Dear Mom,

      My waist size has shrunk from 36 to 34 or less.  Going forward, please purchase my underwear accordingly.

                                                                                Your son,
                                                                                         Max

Vacationing in the North

Its been six weeks of working half days, so its time for vacation.  Ill be traveling for about 16 days to the north towards Nebu and Todos Santos for some hikes in the countrys biggest mountains and then to the east.  When time runs out Ill return to the lake to go to work on the construction of a new three story, bamboo hotel in Tzununa.  Updates will be unlikely in the interim.  I hope everyone is well and thanks for the notes Ive received.

On Language

 A lot of people asked me if I spoke Spanish before I flew down here. I would answer 'yes' and though I took 5 years of Spanish in high school, it felt like a lie when I was saying it. About six weeks later it doesn't feel like a lie anymore, and that's a better feeling. The five years of class did count and so did a couple vacations over the years and so did working at Sealed Air and so did Dan Montagna live-translating song lyrics into Spanish here and there. A lot of vocab has come back to me or I can pick it up in context. The tough part is remembering that word the next time I need to use it myself. You can pick up vocab all over the place. Something I'd been trying to recall for the last few days was the Spanish for 'to show'. I was using my friend Cat's cellphone to call my friend Tim and 'mostrar' was the option for one of the buttons, Show. As far as conjugation, I'm pretty good with present, present participle, past and future. I need work with pronouns. Sentences laden with la, le, les, me, te, and se usually throw me for a loop even when I'm on board with the subject, object and verb.

My attitude with speaking Spanish is much the same as it is with cooking. I'm happy to let someone else do it if they know how, but I can do it, and I will if need be. That said, I do very much enjoy and practice listening in Spanish. My cooking and Spanish hover around the same skill level as well. There's a strong base but I could stand to sprinkle in some flavoring around the edges. I'm certainly not dreaming in Spanish yet but I did inadvetenly address one of the animals in Spanish. I was excited for a swim we were to have in the lake and I asked one of the dogs "¿Quiere nadar?", "Do you want to swim?" I have realized there is a distinct on/off switch in my head for listening to Spanish. I must either actively focus all my concentration on translation or it's all a bunch of garbaldegook in the background.

While in Thailand, Cambodia and India, I was resigned to not speaking the language more than hello and thank you. I enjoyed those countries immensely despite the barrier between myself and locals when it came to any real conversation. I never had a problem navigating around and I certainly had no trouble getting fed. Being able to add to a warm smile a variety of greetings and further exchanges depending on the circumstance certainly adds worlds to the travel experience. I chat with locals about anything and everything and take impromptu, informal Spanish lessons wherever I can find them.

My mother reminded me it was possible that the locals here may speak with a thick, difficult to interpret accent. It turns out the opposite is true. Around Lake Atitlan live mostly Mayan people. There are 24 Mayan languages in use in Guatemala. I'm not sure how they're divided up, but in certain places, they're quite localized. In San Marcos de la Laguna, where I've been living, the people speak X'Chi Kel. The next lake town to the west is San Pablo de la Laguna and it's a 15-minute trip in a tuk-tuk and less in the boat. In San Pablo, the people speak Chi Kel, a different language with some overlap.

I'm guessing at the transliterated spelling of X'Chi Kel and I don't have internet, it's pronounced kek-chee-kel and the language uses lots of throaty clicks and stops. Just about all the locals speak both X'Chi Kel and Spanish. For the Mayan people here, Spanish is a second language and as such, they speak very clearly. The Spanish is much easier to understand here than in the Sealed Air break room populated with Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. I've heard people say Guatemala is the best place for learning Spanish. As I was beginning to feel a little better about my skills, we got a new Yoga teacher, Lilliana, from Mexico. I have to try a lot harder to pick up what she's saying.

I couldn't say if some of my favorite expressions are unique to Guatemala, but here they are nonetheless. For money, 'la plata' is preferred over 'dinero'. Buenos Dias, Buenas Tardes and Buenas Noches are standard, and you'll often hear one of these shortened to simply 'Buenas' with the first syllable more drawn out for this abbreviated greeting. After I wish the tienda clerk a good evening, she will often reply with 'igualmente'. In Xela, also known as Quetzeltenango, I learned a nice way to address someone is with either mi reina or mi rey, my queen or my king. This is very charming with our lunch cook, Petrona. With Petrona's husband, Noe, he is more of a 'vos'. "Mire, vos..." is like "Look, man..." or "¿Que piensas, vos?" is like "What do you think, amigo?".

I very much enjoy absorbing the idioms and lingo from the English speakers of the world as well. My friend Cat is from England and has spent a lot of time in Wales. Understanding her can be worse than Spanish. Several times a day, she "can't be asked" to do something like climb stairs or yell at Petrona for serving lunch late. Usually, she hasn't been asked and does the job anyway. I love hearing another English buddy, Tom, exclaim "Bloody hell, man!" especially when he's speaking with a woman. Raisins are sultanas, a flashlight is a torch, a period is a full stop, I am lo Maximo, a vest is a singlet, a hoodie is a jumper, sneakers are trainers and eggs are eggs. An Australian friend Laura described bagels as "morish" and for Tim, from Maryland, and myself, this invoked Shakespeare and Iago. Bagels are morish because you always want more of them. In the internet cafe, two women were on computers to my left. The closer one got up and told her friend she was going to go get chocolate. The other lady was too facebooked to hear her and the first woman repeated herself and the second woman laughed and said "Oh, you're going to get chocolate." When she said chocolate, it sounded exactly like Laura. I said, "You're from Melbourne." and she said "That's right." Without using any colloquiallisms, sometimes Australians just say ridiculous things like, "The Rock is an amazing actor."


Hasta later. I must vamos.   

On Meditation, with Ceri the Yogi

We had an excellent Yoga teacher at the Yoga Forest for a week.  She was scheduled for longer   Her name was Ceri (pronounced just like Carrie) and she came from the UK.  I think she was the most advanced teacher I've ever had.  She introduced a half dozen binds I'd never seen before.  If you don't know what a bind is, just know they're really hard and 

A few days earlier, I had taught a few friends a favorite card game from back home, Pitch.  My hilarious buddy Blake was very taken with the game and was always trying to drum up a game by asking in his native Australian English, "Pitch?".  Timing is everything here. 

A few days into her stay, Ceri was laid up with an eye infection that rendered one eye swollen shut.  Charlie the architect recommended using chamomile tea bags to be placed on the eye (after steeping) as a remedy.  This did the trick and the next day she was much improved.  This happened to be first big day of the Africanized Killer Bee attacks and Ceri was stung twice on her exit from a respite in Cat's quarters.  She made her way over to Cabana #1 where six of us had taken refuge from the angry pollenators.  She seemed in good spirits upon entry and asked "What's up with these bees?"  Around then, a bee in her hair and one on her leg began buzzing.  Ceri completely melted down.  How can I say this better?  Ceri absolutely lost her shit.  She screamed "Get them off of me!  Get them off of me! I can't take it here anymore." etc.  She shook and convulsed out of control.  I was so grateful there were four women in the room who could take a hold of her, remove the bees and try to calm her down.  She eventually stopped screaming and her sobbing was the only sound in the room. 

"Anyone for Pitch?", says Blake.  I experienced uproarious laughter on the inside while Blake accepted scornful reproach from several of the women.

Ceri, who stayed in the other bed on the ground floor of Cabana #1, told me in the morning that she would be teaching Yoga that day.  After Yoga, she informed everyone that she would be leaving that day. We've been asking Petrona to present a bigger salad at lunch, because it's a healthy crowd that likes to eat a lot of the fresh salad picked on the premises.  She sent out a good haul, but nine people made a pretty big crowd at lunch that day.  As often happens, I served myself first what seemed like maybe 1/9th of the salad from the soup pot.  Ceri served herself thereafter taking scoop after scoop after scoop piling up on her plate about half of what was left for her and the other seven people.  Ceri chewed really well and ate even slower than Uncle Gusti.  Long after everyone else had a clean plate, Ceri still had more salad than everyone else started with.  This was a big topic of conversation after her departure and it was hard to imagine how a 34 year-old woman who's been traveling for 13 straight years could've performed this blunder but maybe Blake was right when he summed it up by saying in perfect Australian English, "She's a total dick."

Here's a bonus photo attesting related to the killer bees, though it's myself, not Ceri:

Now to the meat of the post: here's what Ceri had to say, paraphrased, when I inquired on how a newbie should approach meditation:

"Do it after Yoga.  Yoga is only the body breaking through physical barriers, which are also mental barriers, in preparation to aid in meditation.  Sit in a comfortable, seated position with your spine as straight as possible.  Do not try to fight against thoughts coming into your mind, but let each thought that comes float away like a passing cloud in the sky.  Try 10 minutes and try not to move."

I do appreciate that advice and the rest she offered me.  I liked Ceri more and more the longer she stayed and I think the salad event was just an abberation caused by her multiple ailments.  I wish her much better luck in all her future stops than what she had with us.  

Bee Sting Count

5

Dear Outhouse,

    I love you.  I love your solitude and tranquility.  I love your open view of the lake and mountains beyond.  I love arriving to your doorstep to find the outer latch engaged, indicating vacancy.  I love finding the bamboo rod stocked with eco-friendly toilet paper.  I love your sink.

    It's not your fault that my new vegetarian, and largely vegan, lifestyle causes all my shits to escalate from nonentities to dire emergencies in the space of four minutes.  You didn't choose your location a three-minute, uphill walk from my cabana.  That's not your fault.  I don't blame you for the time I couldn't make it back from town all the way to lift your Rastafarian/Yogic themed lid to eliminate therein.  It really is not your fault that I had to duck off the trail to relieve myself in an exasperated, sweaty and degrading act of desperation. As a plus, I learned that using the shiny leaves of a coffee tree are just as effective as not wiping at all and leaves the tree a little less happy.

    Outhouse, I speak for everyone when I say I love you.  Please keep up the great work and I will see you soon.

                                                                                        Most Sincerely,
                                                                                                Max Bramson Benjamin

Book Reviews 10.11.13

Disclaimer: These reviews are not necessarily trustworthy.  Read whatever you want.  

A Long Walk to Freedom
The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
1994

Great book.  Excellent history lesson about the freedom struggle in South Africa from the start of Mandela's life with some prior history mixed in.  It is fascinating to go into the mind of an amazing freedom fighter and politician and understand the logic behind decisions made by leaders of the African National Congress.  Mandela writes beautifully while simply and used a few handfuls of English words I did not know.  He also employs a unique array of sentence structures I can't remember encountering elsewhere.  He presents the information unbiased and mixes in a surprising amount of humor.  There are plenty of times in history when white people have been unfair dicks, but I didn't know much about this really awful one; I'm glad I do now.  Big, beautiful book, must read.  One thing that comes to mind is that for the ~27 years Mandela was in prison, he was only photographed once, when late in that period he left to visit with the South African president.

The Life Before Us
Romain Gary
1986
Translated from the French

Nice book, pretty quick read.  This was the Cornell University summer reading book for incoing freshman some years back.  I have a terrible memory for books, this one included.  I remember it being written in the voice of a 10-year old orphan.  Plenty of humor, if you have the chance, you may like it.

100 Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
1967
Translated from the Spanish

I'd skip it, but make sure to read Love in the Time of Cholera by the same author.  Florencia, a traveling Argentine woman I met here described Marquez, or Garcia, as "a delightful writer", which I absolutely agree with.  Here, Marquez presents a book with a bazillion characters most of whom have some version of the same name, Jose Arcadio Buendias.  The family tree on the opening page is proof.  The pages turn without any real hardship as the writing is always delightful and the creativity, or possibly truth, behind the anecdotes is marvelous.  I didn't perceive much of a story or grander meaning and felt my reading pace slow a bit when it came to finishing this book.  To this day, I wonder at how our AP Spanish teacher at Berkshire could have thought to assign this book in Spanish for summer reading.  I had well enough trouble in English.  I hung in for about three sentences then threw in the towel.  He never mentioned it that year in class.

Daughter of Fortune
Isabel Allende
1999
Translated from the Spanish

Sadly, I've read very few books by women and I was excited to get into this one.  I'm about 3/4 of the way through right now.  The upshot here will be that I'm enjoying this book very much, but with a few comments.  It's extremely accessible and the pacing is perfect.  It feels a little light on real character development and also a little light in terms of education.  I love when I learn a topic from a book, like learning about apple farming, cider-making and old-school obstetrics in Cider House Rules, and I'm blanking on more examples.  This book seems to graze over the topics, around the mid-1800's, of maritime travel, Chinese medicine and the California Gold Rush but it seems to lack the expertise of the author on these subjects.  It is a strong eye-opening look at upper class Chilean society of the same period.  That all said, I look forward to sitting down with this book to finish it and wouldn't hesitate to grab another Allende book.  

Bee Sting Count

4

Around San Marcos & San Pedro 9.30.13

La Lancha, town to town boat transport around Lake Atitlan

 Scorpion, found by Hannah in her rain jacket in our cabana.

Yoga Forest & San Marcos 9.25.13

?Please pardon the punctuation in the following post, I can{t figure out where the apostrophe is on this keyboard?
________

Seven of us went out for dinner in the pueblo last night to celebrate two birthdays.  We ate well and had a good time then hiked back up to the Yoga Forest single file along the narrow path.  

We found out at breakfast this morning that four of the chickens, half the full count, had been killed in the night by a mystery animal.  Cat thought it was some kind of big cat, but the locals thought it was some kind of racoon-like rodent.  One bird had most of its body eaten out and went straight to the compost.  The other three had just been strangled and otherwise mangled about the neck. 

I was part of the group of volunteers to prepare the chicken for consumption.  When Cat handed me the dead rooster by its feet, I was taken aback.  Several minutes later I pulled that same chicken from a bucket of warm water and began to pluck the feathers.  Ive never done this before.  Chickens have many festhers, but when you pull most of them out, the farm-pecking chicken begins to look more like a Big Y chicken, except the bird still has head, feet, and guts. 

The head and feet can go with a sharp machete.  After I chopped the chickens head off, I shook out the crop.  This is a bunch of undgested food, in this case it was mostly corn, which Blake suggested we could reuse by heating it up and eating it.  Gutting the chicken was the worst part.  After cutting off the chickens ass, you reach your fist in and grab everything and pull it out.  You junk it all except for the liver and the heart.  The liver was delicious, but we will eat the rest of the chicken later.  The discarded parts of the chicken, get inserted into a compost pile to add nitrogen and speed up the breakdown. 

With another volunteer and friend Hannah, it was also my job to turn that compost pile adding the chicken parts along with some rabbit poo.  It was a large pile and when we were done it seemed like it chould be lunch time.  I was crossing the little bridge back toward where both the tools are kept and lunch is served.  Gaspar, a local worker and friend of mine, addressed me with some urgency from the greenhouse and pointed toward the kitchen.  My Spanish comprehension, which has been coming along nicely along with my speech, always suffers in ambient noise.  The creek that runs through the property makes a good rumble so it was hard for me to understand Gaspar.  I decided to set down the shovel and pitchfork I was holding then approach Gaspar from the kitchen.  As I crossed path the kitchen, I looked in to see Cat wearing a beekeepers hat and finally understood there was some kind of bee attack going on about which Gaspar was trying to warn me. 

At that moment, I felt a bee land on my face, find its footing, and sting me unprovoked on my cheek.  Some years back, I got stung by something on the back of my arm and had a strong allergic reaction that prompted the triage staff at the ER to wheel me in without waiting.  I was telling this to Hannah when a couple more bees came around.  I fled back across the little brdge toward the cabanas and sat down, closer to my Epipen.  The sting hurt a bit but not too bad and I had no abnormal reaction.  15 minutes later, I returned to the kitchen, thanked Gaspar for his good intentions and sat down to a delicious vegetarian lunch. 

We had a nice, sunny morning though we are just in the middle of Guatemalas rainy season.  Sunshine held up long enough for Laura and me to show the newer volunteers, Blake and Hannah, the Trampolin.  This misnomer is really a platform for jumping into Lake Atitlan from 7m, or 23 feet, above the surface.  We all made the jump.  I scampered down to dive from about 15 feet, but I couldnt muster up the courage to dive from the trampolin.  Im commited to doing it before I leave town.  Like every other day in the afternoon, its raining, and Im caught in the village with no raincoat.  Ill cross the little plaza to the library where the 19 year-old staffer there, Max, and I will have another informal Spanish-English lesson.  When I sense an abatement in the downpour, Ill hike back up the hill. 

La Laguna San Marcos

Greetings from San Marcos La Laguna.  Everything is lovely.  Slow to no internet here in town.  Hope everyone is well.

The money here is Quetzales.  About 7.7 Guatemalan Quetzales to the US Dollar.

People are extremely nice, emissions are horrible but that isn´t problem here in the pùeblo.

More to come in time.

Max

Ciudad Vieja y Cerro de la Cruz 9.11.13

My new buddy Rick on the steps down from the cross.  

Here I am overlooking Antigua from Cerro de la Cruz, a very large cross not shown.  

Antigua, Guatemala 9.10.13

Greetings from Antigua, Guatemala where everything is lovely.  I got a decent amount of sleep on the midnight flight and on the floor of Mexico City's Airport.

I took a walk alone after a shower.  I went through the local market where I felt pretty invisible and had some nice local food.

Any nervousness I had has evaporated so yours should, too, Mom.  It feels great to be back out into the realm of the new.  

Farewell from NYC 9.9.13

re·prieve 

[ri-preev] noun
2.   To relieve temporarily from any evil. 

1501 Broadway, home of my former employer, Hardesty & Hanover

     I've had this flip phone for many years. It always worked fine and the battery life remained strong through the years. This was my phone well into the years of smartphone ubiquity and the shock and dismay people expressed when seeing my phone for the first time long ago became tiresome and depressing. Girls at the bar would ask why I didn't upgrade and I told them with this phone I could call them, text them and, most importantly, send dick pics. I never wanted internet or email in my pocket; in fact, at the times, here and there, when I lost my phone or forgot to take it somewhere, I always enjoyed not having it. Through the years, I've joked, on the rare days when I got too many calls or text messages, that I would end up throwing my phone in the river.

     Once, during my year of teaching high school Physics, I proposed to a group of four or five boys in my senior, non-AP class that they do a round of rock, paper, scissors and the loser would have to throw his phone in the Quahog River. Just after a young man named Andrew lost, he said he wasn't gonna throw his phone in the river. As a generally trusting person, I had overestimated these high school kids and was shocked at his flagrant dishonor to the game. I told him if he chose not to follow through with the agreed upon consequences, he would have to suffer something woree. Moments later, his classmate Ryan hit him in the nuts. The connection was solid and Andrew doubled over in pain. Judging this as an adequate substitute for a waterlogged and lost phone, I was inwardly pleased and allowed the act to pass unpunished. Class continued.

     Four nights ago, there was a gathering held in honor of my departure. During a conversation with my father and his once coworker and longtime family friend Faye, she inquired about The Yoga Forest, my first extended stay destination in Guatemala. As I began to tell her about the place, my father sugeested we look at their website on his phone. I suggested we skip that hoping we could carry on the conversation without a technological interjection. Getting away from iPhone nation full of iPhone zombies is high on my list of reasons for leaving.

     A couple months ago, my trusted LG flipphone developed a small crack on the outside of the bearing where the screen pivots away from the keypad. Through contunued use, the crack propagated and eventually a small piece of plastic fell of the phone. The phone now, while held by the screen, could dangle, only attached at the other half of the bearing. It worked for a while, but eventually, the two essential halves of the phone became completely separated and though calls could be placed, I couldn't hear anything and the detached screen showed black. For the time it still worked, the phone was held together by what my mother described as "a small piece of tobacco."

     I coupled someone's old Verizon cellphone with my account so I could have a phone until my departure. Leaving from New York City seemed the perfect opportunity to finally throw that old phone in a river. My plan was to go the crest of the Manhattan Bridge, say a few (recorded) words and casually toss the phone into the mouth of the East River below. I write these words on the eve of my departure from the Park Slope apartment of my longtime friend and ex-roommate Aaron Morse and his new roommate, my longtime friend and Hebrew School classmate, Lee Weiss. The top of the Manhattan Bridge is nearly three miles from here, and with no bicycle to use, I won't end up going. I'm not walking and I'm not taking a Subway closer to the bridge to hike up and add litter to water beneath. Instead, I'll head to Prospect Park and continue reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography as the man himself nears his final days.

     I don't need a symbolic ceremony for this. Canceling the plan and giving up the personal phone number I've had for 11 years is the meaningful part. The time I get back will be for me, this trip is for me and even these words are for me. I appreciate immensely the support I've received from loved ones, both emotional and financial, and I wish everyone the courage needed to move forward with your own dreams and journies, whatever they may be. Anywhere on Earth people are surviving, you can survive, too.

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