running to my host brothers football game, eating pico in the street, reading letters from long lost loved ones, talking with strangers, drinking carrot juice and loving life in ocotal at the moment. but that feels incomplete, coming home from leon and las peñitas yesterday i was thrilled to back in ocotal and could not of been happier and it is that feeling of familiarity that i am happy about not just that i love ocotal. i love living here and love being here and i feel comfortable here and wanted here and no longer like a total outsider.


and my mom here, marcela, is sick. that sucks.

demetrio

ah.

so it is thursday. almost noon here. what does that mean?

1. its hot and only getting hotter, the heat peaks around 230 when my first class starts.

2. sweat. everywhere all over me and its getting to be normal but nasty, and i can only shower in the morning cause my shower is outside. this means one shower a day before i feel horrendous.

3. lunchtime traffic, everyone goes home from work or school or where to eat at the house and then returns to where ever they were. sometimes other family members take food to the work or the school of other family members the streets of ocotal are busiest right now.

4. im not eating, ive got some nasty fucking diarrhea so im not putting anything else in here until i hit the doctor and get my poop examined, im almost going on the hour. its pretty fucking terrible.

what it does not mean is that tomorrow, i will be getting on a bus to go to Estelí and have breakfast at an amazing organic biodynamic restuarant just outside the city. it serves whole grain bread, fabulous cheeses, fruit drinks, coffee, hot chocolate and all sorts of goodies that i am not used to here. my life, my diet, some the main excitement in my day consists of rice and beans or gallo pinto(exact translation: painted rooster) but what it really is rice and beans with oil and salt tossed in a pan, oh its delicious but for three meals a day, i tend to get edgy with understanding and patience, meaning that id like some fucking chinese food or a sweet bowl of pesto right about now. however, im happy and accepting this along with everything else is just part of the ride.

the ride has its ups and downs. class is a mix of both. 4 hours a day, more or less or drilling verbs, vocab, practicing conversation and just absorbing until the point of explosion. as it gets hotter, the dry season just started, so this heat is actually nothing it will only get much much much worse before the rains begin in late may, absorbtion of words and grammar becomes more difficult. it is as if our brains are like the earth lacking water and cracking with dehydration as we attempt to fill ourselves with the knowledge of a foriegn language that we can barely decipher.

ok i lie, we can decipher the language but it is only now, week 4 that i can really begin to hear and speak with less fear and hesitation and even there is the speed and accent with which people talk, pronunciation and stresses upon words and syllables that i am struggling with, though progress is being made. to that affect i am seeking long term employment here or internship, and yeah, by long term i mean a year or more. ive been looking for jobs teaching or working with non-profits in order to really sit down, cement and allow my spanish to grow its roots. to the point in which i am considering the peace corp. yeah i know, but still its an awesome experience.

my plotting, in addition to the peace corps, knows no limits one of the other gringas and i are talking about farming in france or working on yachts. im dreaming of china still and trying to find a way to stretch my green as far as it can go. tense, exciting, nerve racking - yes racking, like The Rack from the time of castles and kings, where the string the poor sucker up on the torture device and pull him slowly, ever so slowly, apart, limb by limb, by limb. thats how my nerves feel sometimes.

like at night, in my room, my cement room, with four exits, two doors and two windows when i think about the past and feel fear, and amazingly enough i dont think that i had ever really felt fear before. it makes you sweat. not because you are hot, but because your insides turn to ice, a chill works it way from your insides out and when you feel it grip all your skin you break out in that icy sweat of fear. this is unlike the sweat i am sweating right now. because i am hot now and fear is cold, cold like winter, the middle of winter, when its snowing all the time and you cant see behind you because the flakes are turning like mad in the air as the drifts pile up around your past and all you have built and when you look ahead all you see is one thing, the fear, the result of the storm and there is no option its not like a future without fear, you cant choose you just walk in a straight line without thinking about anything ever, going blindly where you know you will be going. fear is totalizing, it is legion and it sits quietly growing and waiting to take control.

control. i have a little of it these days. gave up coffee and have really really really cut down my drinking out of a desire to stop both. i really want to give up drinking but wine. the beauty of wine pulls at me so bad. im trying. and im happy about the trying. maybe the control is an attempt to beat the fear. maybe im making a mountain out of a molehill.

the sweet sundays and the time spent writing reading and reviewing my language practicing my rr´s and ll´s with the locals eating ice cream in the park and breathing in the dust free air while reading the brightly colored signs about what kind of tree is where and why.

fiction of late has been better than food, life of pie, some barbara kingsolver, toni morrison and now some barry unsworth, whatever the free pile at the net cafe has im going into once im out fiction its into the thick of latin american history and more details about economic globalizationa and by then ill be left with nothing but writing my own words and talking with strangers on the dusty streets of ocotal

bookshelves are a luxury here, its one at a time, like phrases relationships and the excitement of meals and going to the bathroom.

tuani.

im out

que te vaya bien.
demetrio

letters
are often the result
of procrastination
surrounding my
spanish hmwork
id prefer
right how
to write
a letter to
my friend
and tell him
how im
feeling

understand?

oh the sundays

Hey -

Scrolling through some old emails I saw your address, wanted to say hi from down here and tell you about Ocotal & Nicaragua.

Think dust, blankets of, drifting steadily, slowly through the air and settling briefly on uneven dirt rock and stone streets to be kicked up again by the next taxi, truck, rickshaw or bike that cruises by. At night time you can see it in the air, hanging like thin low clouds, during the day you feel it first on your skin in your sweat or on the lenses of your glasses.

But when you stop walking in the streets, catch a taxi 4 kilos out of town and start walking in the mountains its a different world. red soil, light brown pine needles cover the ground and you are walking through air so light and crisp its like drinking water, you stop under a huge pine tree, the strong wind rushing up the mountain side and you look down into ocotal, see the dust from here and smile cause right now you are breathing purity, untouched and blemish free its the perfect exchange, if you can find time for a hike a day.

Hows new york? Still cold? Still winter? I kind of miss snow right now, a snowball in the face would be sweet relief at anytime of the day here.

abrazos
demetrius

fuck it.

tengo un mal dia para español entonces estoy frustrado.


and growing increasingly frustrated with classes and the monton of homework i get, cause the fucking jesus lovers dont have a speck of patience with me and i just want to shit on a bible and then beat them with it.

ok, im better, just had to get that out there.

im going to go home and get some homework done.

love to all.
demetrio

and kate, i think about you daily.

and your butt.

surrender power
open yourself to other ideas
mix all the ideas in an imaginary box
and we all have one big bright idea


- M. 16, NYC, Global Kids.

one a
day
for health
for sanity, clarity
sustainability, mental
agility emotional openess &
the neccesary fragility it brings

dot em, cross em. if you
got em and we´ll read em
to each other, later in the
darkness with a bottle of
water and let fear die first

this is the before i
make a list poem
im cluttered
got too many ideas
too many things
to do to day
want to only
eat sleep
and dream
the time
away

ah so the life of a parasite, swimming around my intestine, laying eggs in the lining of my intestines and laughing at me as i vomit, shit, and lay nauseated on my bed for hours.

¡oh yay!

the life of a parasite. the life of an extrañero in ocotal, nicaragua, stared at, pointed at, called at whistled, hooted at, cat called to, and having the love of thirteen year old girsl professed to me on the street is oh so fabulouso.

my stomach, my parasites, and my parasite eggs are all just mixing and matching right now chilling out and making shit my brains out. hopefully the time on the bus tomorrow will not totally ruin me.

i think i need to go to atm.

sigh.

so, i wont be continuing the hiking story right now but later i´ll be sure to finish it up.

i think that now i wanted to talk about mornings, wood smoke, chills, roosters, roads, brothers, mothers, families, addiction, challenges, myself and all that is in between. week 2 settles in like a cold unfamiliar blanket and i find myself crying as i drift off to sleep writing poems in my head about my history and the story of wolves and the stories of those who came before me. the flutter of bat wings beats around my room, i am not alone and my roommates diet consists mostly of bugs so i tell la murciélago ´the bat´ to invite its friends over so that i no longer need to sleep with bug repellent on my ears and arms. its not that its so troubling i just dont want malaria and its not that i dont want malaria, but its more so that i do not want to die right now or maybe ever. in 22 years ive seen the tips of so many things that just need to be explored deeper and if i die now, then poof! there go my dreams and my casket will fill with tears because even when dead ill be crying for what i missed and my grave will turn into a swamp where the flies and frogs will congregate and over time the plants will grow, lilies and cat o nine tails and moss and my body will feed them and the lilies will bloom and spread like weeds over the other graves and then the graveyard will become a playground for children who catch frogs and run in the mud scraping thier knees, crying for thier parents and ill stop crying cause ill know thay my death has brough happiness to generations and ill remember when i was young and when i caught frogs in gaint white plastic buckets inwhich the ribbits and bull calls of frogs would echoe like a sousaphone stuck in an elevator on the 44th floor of an office building that no one wanted to be in and the people would hear the sousaphone playing and stand up from thier desks and go looking for the music that they all wanted to be playing or that they all played in middle school but somewhere between now and then they lost the notes or sold their instruments sold thier dreams and the others will crawl beneath thier own desks to look in the darkness for a warmth which they let go of when their own dreams stopped playing and thier own desires stopped clamoring for attention and they let it fall by the wayside, just below the curb of the high sidewalks of ocotal´s streets like i drop my orange peel, like i drop my eyes, like i turn away from the beggars and the drunks because i think i have no choice and i wonder what is true or not.

but right now, what is true is that i have homework which needs to be done.

on sunday i rose with the sun, with the rooster and with the dew drops to catch a bus up towards las tres senoritas located a few kilometers outside of ocotal, nicaragua in the misty pine covered mountains. its a time of day in ocotal that i had never seen before, cool and gray, with clouds passing steadily above people had started thier sundays well before i had arrived at the bus stop waiting for alissa. walking across the pan-american alissa had me chuckling with a triangular peice of ´pan dulce´ or sweet bread in her hand, shorts on and an overly large pack for a few hours of hiking. Not to be outdone by alissa´s pan dulce i got my own with little dabs of jelly in the center of a circular sweet cookie. a fabulous and normal breakfast for ocotalenos, if only i had the black, sweet coffee to dip the cookies in. Laughing about being the only gringos up this early in ocotal and certainly the only ones waiting at the grimy metal bus stop on the already dusty smoky panamerican highway across from la shell i relaxed and settled in for a day of conversation and exercise.

But not without its problems, the first bus driver told us that it did not stop there and refused to even answer our queries. at this point we opted for a taxi, the driver knew about the three ladies, but did not know exactly where to let us off the on the highway, we meandered through the windy road and after passing a pair of houses across from each other and above a bus stop we got let off there. the fare? 10 cordobas or 65 cents. we approached the first house and let out a cautious ´Buenas!´ hoping that 615am on a sunday would not be to early and true to most of nica, it wasnt. the family was exceedingly helpful, pointing out the path for us and saying that a cluster of three houses on the path would give us our next set of directions.

heading up the rock, red dirt, and donkey dung path i could feel my legs waking up, my breath shortening, and my smile growing as our day really began. even here at the base of the path you could see parts of ocotal from above and feel the breeze rushing down the mountains, i saw my first cactus tree. the top of which looks and feels(ouch!) like a cactus, but the bottom had hardened and looked exactly like a regular albeit segmented tree trunk. amazing. scattered around our feet were recently fallen leaves, as the dry season is nica´s fall, of deep reds and light browns and dangling on the leaves flanking us were light purple flowers, delicate and dangling from vines that criss crossed the barbwire fence to our left and right.

the paths goes from left to right and directly ahead of us we see our three houses. we stop at the one on the right with a more confident ´Buenas!´ and are again greeted warmly by a family of three who were accompanied by a small farm of pigs, turkeys, dogs, hens, and roosters. they offered us coffe, directions and conversation but we only accepted the latter of the three, knowing that cup of coffee could turn into breakfast and we were still trying to beat the sun to top of the las tres senoritas. ´Go straight, then left, then right, then left again and follow that straight onto all the way and you will find your ladies´ in the lilting, tenor spanish of the mountains outside of ocotal.

dinner waits, more will come later.