Relaxation. Pizza, brownies, espresso, wireless internet, liter after liter of Tona, chef salads, warm showers, an explosion of intellectual English conversation - not that that does not exist in Ocotal but to have those conversations with other people and see where I am and where I have come from, looking backwards, reflection.

Talking with a group of travellers this morning we talked about what actions we can take to change things and Bridget said mindfulness. I thought, no, its not mindfulness because no one knows what mindfulness means. I had explained what I my process of understanding looked like. Of how I was learning, living and understanding Nicaraguan poverty and my relationship to it. I understand it through understanding where I come from. I have found that by focusing on what I know, my experiences and where I find myself and then relating that mix of thoughts to the experience it helps me understand everything that I am living in right now. So then: How much am I living this?

This poverty? This experience. These rice, beans and tortillas I eat every day. This dust that dirties my clothes, these bus seats that hurt my bottom, these Nicaraguan eyes that burn into me and these lives en lo que estoy metiendome - putting myself in - how much of that I am really living? How much do I want to? How much am I welcome to?

Granada is Nicaragua's tourist capital. I say this as I use wireless internet, drink espresso and listen to some fachenta old white women talk about tax status. This is twisted. But I am happy.

Finding comfort, space, doing some work and enjoying my time not in Ocotal as this is more isolation and we, Gringos, love isolation. We love isolating ourselves. Completely and then we love putting on these truely false faces of warmth and community. Everyday. I do it here and in Ocotal. Just seeing gringos I get the vibe that this is who we are: Cold. Frozen stiff. Frost bitten. Left forgotten in the freezer by the absent minded cook. We are last weeks leftovers, each unwanted, without love and ignored. Complacent and accepting. Voiceless, we don't cry foul. We are the 21st century's mutes. A generation lost in our comfort. Buried in our personal apartment tombs of stuff, piling and rising and reaching towards, finally touching the cieling conspiring with God in hushed tones, saying that the time has come and we hear these whispers filtering down through the piles of stuff, thing after thing after unused thing collecting dust, spawning mold, vibrating with God's voice, birthing a whole new world of waste in which we, the mutes, swim, get by and die.

I think we have chosen this life for ourselves. We gave ourselves this fate using our oft prided sense of freedom and ability to chose, we chose nothing. Not just nothing but worse than nothing, we chose to be hollow. To have bodies riddled with holes, to have souls sliced thin like Swiss cheese, layered thick on sandwhiches of dissatisfaction, dissafection, disassociation and the disease of loneliness. This is where we find ourselves: lost, lonely and wandering, disease laden through strange lands searching for something to fill these holes.

What are my holes? I ask. What are they? Where do they come from? Will analyzing my holes give me more insight into understanding others and myself? Yes. Are you sure? Yes, because the better I know myself the better positioned I will be to understand you and you and you. So then the daunting question. What are my holes? What am I looking for? Where should I look? Are my answers hiding in Nicaragua or in Spanish? What keys do I need to open which doors? Who has thems? Why? To everything, why? So then the question moves not from what, which or where but to why.

I think that is where I find myself now. The why.

Why am I in Nicaragua? Why Spanish? Why work with a program about social and linguistic exchange? Why did I meet the people that I met? Why me? Why 2006? Why? Why? Why?

Exhausting, but a starting place. Somewhere to go from as I explore this minefield you jokers call life. I am happy. Amongst all that I am happy. Promise. Believe me. The search brings happiness in purpose, the truth is in the transit as some famous person said whom my friend Sarah quotes in her emails. Sarah brings me happiness as do my other friends and strangers. Bus rides and birds, sunsets and pasta sauce, lolipops and Bachata, hugs and handshakes, conversations and languages, exploration and admittance of insecurity which does give you this rather thin yet unimaginably warm blanket of confidence. I love all those things and there is not enough computer code nestled in the back of programmers's brains nor enough gigabytes to hold all the words representing reality that give me happiness, pure unbridled bristling with joy happiness. Those experiences, those real things, those brushes of flesh and flashes of memory would never fit on any gigabyte or in any computer code. It is to know that happineess is far beyond digitization or conformity.

The guy says don't worry too much. I say I don't.