El Transito - #27

In emotional transit, from here to what's next.

Consciousness waned as the scenery repeated. New but the same to her. An SUV, indistinguishable from the recent to the now, modern and fine, but a driver’s car — his personality visible through where he put his phone and how he took his calls: brief, hurried, courteous to the women carrying bags on their backs and under their eyes.

He didn’t know them, but you could tell who he did — this red light means nothing, here the road dips, there it curves, and many wheres it rises to bite the under carriage of the car.

The landscape and its actors had want, but didn’t wear it. Taped flip flops with smiles, burnt leaves with blooms. If survival could be happy, it was. The sun was proud and high, and we hid it from it, only the windshield feeling the broil as we enjoyed the bake. Rolling hills of dirt and chaparral, wire and trash, the contained sky of a land as low as the sea. No slow climax, no building of rhythm, just a turn, then a road, then a gate. A place built by hand, not by gold. A sign painted, not printed. The wind blending into the people and into the days. If in Hell you are greeted by the hounds of blood, here you are greeted by the dogs of water — curiosity in their eyes, sand in their coats, hope in their tails. I scanned the rocks, looking for a cat, finding only chickens. There’d be one around here somewhere, and I was ready to make their acquaintance and alliance. Dogs will call it home because you tell them it’s so — cats will call it home because it is.

“Do you want to walk around or see your rooms?”

She must’ve said hi. Women in messy buns and cut off shorts and most importantly unfitted t-shirts always say hi — or they did when the belief was seeded, before dishevelment became couture.

A boy, a man, with kinds eyes and a soft demeanor gentle in size and approach held out a coconut with a straw in it, standing as far away as possible to hand it to me. Curtesy and covid blending into the space. I took the green mass in my hands. The milky organ cleaner only vaguely more palatable a galaxy away from burden. An empty pen to my left, a dirt one to my right, and the cropped photo of the thatched entrance in front of me. What is good is never perfect, and what is perfect is never real.

We turned around, back onto the sandy dirt road in the blaring sun and wind to walk to our rooms. Another thatched roof on adobe and concrete like a sunhat over linen, with light wooden doors to smooth cement — elemental and simple — a pool too small for an elephant but just right for a hippo taking center stage, the water shimmering in the light. And I went to the right, to let go, to lie down, to become and be undone. And it would let me.

There were no escapes. No TV, no WiFi, no masterful views or whimsy. Just a white bed on a gray floor with curtains I would call ugly if I found them in someone’s home. I would sleep here but not now. Now, I needed to find the cat. Où est le chat? Donde está el gato? Because they will be where it is quiet, where it is warm, where it is just enough out of the way to join if inclined but disappear, fade into the ambiance if ambiance is all they seek.

I sipped the coconut again, finding nothing left, and walked from sun hat to sun hat to see who I was when there wasn’t anyone to be.

---

Leap, a poem

Leap, she said
She, who knew how to leap
Have faith, they said
Having nothing to show

The ground is forever, I said
And I am, in comparison, quite small
I said
A leap is but three feet
Steps, of the kind I take
that you take
I will step

And several men appeared
with all of these steps
These ones, this way
     to stone and ache and
These ones, here now
     to amber ambivalence
—No, here, step step
     to the end, to rest
Step, step, and faster
Step here, step step
Step step, I said
They said
I stepped
I stepped
they stepped and were
    stepping and stepping
and I was stepped in
and stepped on
and absolutely stepped with steps

Lead, she said
She who took every step
She who held every footfall
She who had never leaped
But who has always caught those
     who had
     who would

---

The above passage and then poem were written on retreat in El Transito, Nicaragua. It’s a retreat, but isn’t that a weird word for a week of intentional living? I am not retreating — I am trying to pry myself open. (And get a tan, sunblock willing.)

It is, of course, hard to be on vacation when thinking of war. But vacation, vacating, again, is not what I’m trying to do. I am courage hunting. It’s just easier in a bikini.

Trust & Travel

The last retreat I went on was in 2014 to Guatemala, led by the inimitable Ann Friedman and her co-conspirator Gracy Obuchowicz. Then, I was in a bad job with a bad boyfriend in a bad mental state. Now I am not. But healing doesn’t mean you have found everything you are seeking. So here I am, and in honor of how far I’ve come, I wanted to share a story I wrote from that retreat eight years ago. I am sharing it as it was when I left Guatemala, unedited and incomplete, because I want those characters to breathe, to tell me where they are now, to maybe help guide me to where I should go.

Anyway, it’s a weird fucking story. You’ll know pretty quick if it’s not for you. And if it is for you, well. You know.

Slug Keltonwright 030415

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