In which not much happens; but go ahead and read on anyway

Having things set for a while gives me time to reflect. By reflect, I mean to say that I look back over what I have done in recent times, over the gap that exists between where I thought I would be now and where I am. To say reflect in that sense is to mean "think about the past", a definition distinct from the type of reflection which involves light or other waves bouncing off surfaces. However in order to remember what I had thought, felt, experienced, I must use those surfaces to reflect the light of my current thought and my current situation. The present is constantly emitting these waves of memory back to the past, the reflection of which forms the basis for my reflection of thought.

As I was saying before the interlude of philosophical gibberish, things are set for a while. I am staying here in Guatemala, working at Camino Seguro, assisting in the Volunteer Office and building/teaching the Men's Literacy Program. I am living in a house here in Guatemala City, a house with cool folks and a sweet roof and I have no plan on moving any time soon. I will be coming back to the States over our December Break, and I am certainly looking forward to that. I am confident in staying, as here I have found a nice living-being situation, and fulfilling work which is challenging, largely self-directed, and vaguely follows my vague career lines.

After a solid month or so of intense future-plan attempts, the past few weeks have been a nice interlude of oblivion. At some point I'll get back to analyzing options and that kind of shit, but for now I am sailing smoothconfidenteasily. My housemates and I spent last weekend at Lake Atitlan, did some relaxing, drinking, kayaking, and got caught in one of the last outbursts of our rainy season. Met up with my friend Louise for a second, and got a little bit sunburned but not the least bit hungover.

At some and various points in the coming years I will be able to look back on this time and remember it with nostalgia. I don't know where I'll be at those points, have only a vague idea of who I'll be, but I am sure of what I will feel. I talked with a man today who is interested in signing up for men's literacy class. We sat in my office. He is 56 years old and works collecting trash at the municipal dump. He wears a baseball cap over his long ruffled curly hair streaked with grey. He is a very thin man with a muscular chest and a leather back support tied around his waist. His face is haggard at best, but his coffee-colored eyes stand out under bushy salt and pepper eyebrows. He talks at length, and every topic seems to provoke his interest. He listens attently as well, and shifts his weight sitting on the sofa in the office. It is hard to follow some of what he says, a mixture of the esoteric nature of his commentary and my own lack of Spanish fluency. I strain my ears to catch every piece, to put together the puzzle. "If I told the story of my life, it might put you to sleep," he says, "When I think of my life, it makes me cry." There he pauses, perhaps for effect, perhaps fighting off a rush of memory.

I did not get to hear the story of his life, perhaps I did not want to. The pain of others can only be held at arms' length for so long. But why would the story put me to sleep and make him cry? Because the people that died were people he knew, he cared about, loved, and to me they are just names. Because when he remembers nights spent on cold street corners, he remembers how the biting wind and solitude stung him all over and ached in his bones. But this is not about how he lived his life in poverty and I did not. I am writing this now, and I can write about him because he came into my life, perhaps only briefly, but hopefully not. If I do not write about myself, I can only write fiction, and that is not what interests me here.

There is no neat summary here, at least not one I have the capability or disposition to think up. Even if I could understand the passage of time, the importance of memory, the meaning of living in a world of such extremes, even I had all the answers, nothing else would change. The apple falls from the tree, just the same whether it hits Newton's head or not. I, for one, do not even want to know the answers, let alone have them. Quasi-ignorance is semi-bliss.