As I prepare to depart from Nicaragua after 6 months, I feel perfectly suspended. My hammock is a good image of my life. I am giving it tomorrow morning to the young man who guards the empty building next door. He is very happy to get it I am happy to give it. It is grey now instead of white, but it is one of the big elegant hammocks made by the collective of street kids turned craftsmen by some project.
He came by this morning to ask if I had been frightened by the bandits running across our tile roofs last night. I wasn't frightened because I had slept through it. I asked him whether he had called the police. He said he didn't because he didn't have a gun and he might have been shot if he was seen. So, this kind handsome young man, stationed to protect us was hiding when danger came. He saw these thoughts flash across my face, and said if there had been an attempt to break into my house, he would have acted. I think he would have. And, I think no gun is most often safer for everyone than gun. And we have had such an easy and respectful relationship.
About the suspended part. I don't know where I am going and what I am going to do. As I have mentioned before, this is not a new experience in my life, Just happen to be hitting the peak of the parabola.
A year ago I was packing to walk the Camino. Today, instead of 2nd skin, water bottles and sleeping bag, I am putting a few nice pieces of Nicaraguan pottery in the same backpack. Everyone is asking me the same question. "Am I going to live here in the future?"
I just don't know. As with everywhere I have lived for years, I didn't put down any roots. My friends here are as mobile as I am. Both Nica friends and expats are coming and going with dizzying frequency.
I love this place. The weather has been beyond perfect. Two nights I had to cover myself with a sheet because of the chill, a few times I have turned on the bedroom air conditioner for an hour or so. Sunny, soft, easy, affordable, nice, improving communications, hopeful, clean, intelligent.... I just don't know what holds me back from committing. It is the same with relationships. Oops, I didn't mean to go there.
I am the same old Julie wherever I am. But it is certainly more cool to be the same old Julie where I am warm, and there is fabulous beauty, and I'm not worried about paying the rent, and I like the music. These words bring to mind a retirement plan I conceived 40 years ago. I would find a small convent in Guatemala and join as a penitent. Oh ya, did I mention that flowers have to be part of the package, also? Then, I think about why a convent rather than a Buddhist monastery. I have some more thinking to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment