There are many things I´ll miss about Guatemala. Like today. I must be having a good hair day. As I was walking down the street, I passed a couple men talking to each other, and one of them stops and says, "Qué mujer, ¿no?" In other words, "What a woman!" Hahaha I love it.

Then ten minutes later, some little guy says in English, "Hi! You are very pretty."

We should say things like that out loud every time we think them. Can you imagine? "Hi! Nice job. You look great."

I also enjoy having lots of free time to read scandalous things about Sarah Palin. All of the bad press on her is beginning to renew my faith in the general American public.

I have noticed about myself that my outrage has a certain trajectory. As things go from good to acceptable to bad, I get uncomfortable and then mad and then outraged. But once they get bad enough, my sense of humor kicks in and I float into a Zen-like but involuntary detachment. The rape kit thing was that kicker for me.

The way rape enters into the public domain always interests me. Talking to survivors, it seems to me that there is a huge disconnect between the extremely personal experience of rape and public discourse about it, which makes life for survivors an uphill battle in a way that cannot be underestimated. I don´t think our society as a whole understands that battle. Rape kits are just one example. The things themselves are ghastly and painful. Why would the chief of police and the governor think victims should pay for them? Where does that come from? It serves, like so many things, as a re-victimization.

What I hate even more is that fact that many who are pro-life, such as John McCain, support allowing abortion for cases of rape and incest, or when pregnancy threatens a woman´s life. I get to experience first-hand how that plays out, because those are the laws in Guatemala and most of Mexico.

As it turns out, proving rape and/or incest is so difficult, time-consuming and dangerous as to prove the law useless. Virtually no legal abortions occur after rape. This is one of those dangerous things that looks like good intention, but ends up harming those it wishes to protect. What does still occur at sobering rates are scary and grotesque incidents of women trying to get abortions anyway. They are victims of the law. If you want to protect rape victims, let them get abortions without having to defend themselves.

And how do we define pregnancy as dangerous to a woman´s life? ALL pregnancies are potentially dangerous to a woman´s life. All pregnancies increase a woman´s chances of diabetes, hypertension, anemia, calcium deficiency, birth complications, postpartum depression and psychosis, poverty and domestic violence just to name a few. If we force her to carry her baby to term, we are forcing her to walk into a quagmire of risk.

Then of course follows the trickier question. What is rape? What is incest? We instinctively think of one end of the spectrum, I think: child molestation, women in emergency rooms. Luckily these are instances in which it is still considered humane to allow abortions. But rape is a spectrum, and is constantly being re-defined in law books. We get into dangerous territory of trying to regulate sex and health.

We need a more nuanced discussion of these issues. I´ll go ahead and say it--we need Obama.

the world is on fire
it´s more than I can handle
down to the water, I try to bring my share
try to bring more
more than I can handle
bring it to the table
bring what I am able
-Sarah McLachlan

Cambia esa cara de seria
esa cara de intelectual, de enciclopedia
que te voy a inyectar con la bacteria
pa´que des vueltas como machina de feria!
--Calle 13

(Change that serious face
the face of an intellectual, of an encyclopedia
I´m going to inject you with bacteria
so you do flips like a ferris wheel!)

(okay so something is lost in translation there)

Our friend the NY Times

I realize most of you reading this are probably voting for Obama anyway, but please read this.

New blog requested

From Susan, a very funny friend:

"Listen sister, I know you're busy, but that David Foster Wallace thing is freakin' me out...can you throw up some pictures of your laundry or a poem about the joys of modern-day air travel?

Thanks!"

Yay people still read my blog!

David Foster Wallace...

David Foster Wallace died Friday night of suicide at the age of 46. How terribly, incomprehensibly sad.

I didn't know him as well as others at Pomona, but from what I can see, his will be a rich and long-lasting legacy.

"But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death." --DFW

May he rest in peace.

"Pre-rush-hour, post-rain-shower, stillness seeping upwards like steam..."

I am more emotional these days. Well, more acutely so.

This is a beautiful time for me. A grand time. Staring out into possibility, and in into silence. Each moment letting go into the next. Living in the prayer in between.

I sat on my neighbor's roof, watching the moon and the clouds surround the Agua volcano. Every day they are different. I sent out my admiration. I heard back:

"Your plans aren't what give you your next moment. I am."

I remember reading a little Heidegger in college, his painstaking analysis of the words for being in German. Being as coming-into-being. Being as becoming. Being as going-out-of-being. I remember a good friend once telling me about love, "It's not just loving who a person is. It's loving their becoming."

Nearing the end of the Pan-American road

My adorable apartment, and the Agua volcano.

The volcanoes Fuego (spouting smoke!!) and Acatenango, which I can also see from my apartment's terrace.

The view from my terrace.

Well.....

So you know that whole "Robo in Guate" thing? Yeah well it's going to end much sooner than I planned. About a year sooner, actually. I have one more month here. My last day of work is October 3rd, and I will leave Guate around the 8th.

It's kind of a long story....

Basically, I got the strong, consistent message from my spirit: "This isn't what I want."

Every time I say, "Well, okay then!" to that inner voice, everything in me thanks me. It's really amazing. Usually my heart will tell me what it wants and doesn't want, if I stop trying to argue with it. And now that I have listened to it, I feel like a whole new person. Vitality has returned to me. I can enjoy this city and each moment I have in it. I swear the world has more color. My heart feels lighter. It's like the stars aligned inside my soul.

What will become of this blog, I do not know...in the mean time, I'm just going to write whatever is going on in my head and heart.

Where will I go next? Is a great question. My heart says, "Somewhere in the general vicinity of Richmond, Virginia." :)