Walls

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all of this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action, it is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but murder. - Albert Einstein

I learned today of the U.S. Army's construction of a three mile long wall dividing Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods within the city of Baghdad. I'm not a military strategist, I've never even played a game of "Risk", I didn't play with plastic soldiers when I was a tyke... but i can't help but being struck speechless. Words about stone walls fail me. They seem to me such an ancient component of human existence, a component of our collective history marked by pain, war, death, conquesting emperors, greedy kings, sacrifice, and separation. A barrier between mankind and...mankind? Back in the days of King Arthur and his valiant knights we humans built protective walls around our cities, a security measure to protect against pillaging rogues and raging armies. Given the weapons of the day, the sword and bow, the boiling hot tar and launched boulders, these meters-thick walls provided a sensible barrier from the traitorous outside world. Nowadays the sensibility factor runs thin, and these barricades serve to separate, to contribute to the rift of inequality in our world.


Already having been deeply disturbed by the construction of the "necessary" triple-fortified section of the "Wall of Shame" being built upon 700 miles of the U.S./Mexican border, this bit of news about Baghdad leaves me unnerved. Are we reverting to another Feudal Era in which the kings of our world believe that we must enclose our world in walls in order to remain "secure"? What does the word "secure" refer to? Closing out our perceived enemies, showing them we'd rather spend millions of dollars on concrete and chain link and barbed wire than on creating programs in their country to benefit the poor? Building the wall in Baghdad amidst thousands of people protesting throughout the city crying desperately for the division to STOP? Bush slaps the face of Congress for their attempts at holding his administration accountable for their deception, lies, and greed. Put Mr. President on the defensive and I suppose that's the knee-jerk reaction we should expect to receive. "Oh yeah, look at me now. I can do whatever I want. You think I’m causing civil war and destroying a country? I'll show you civil war."... Mr. Bush would do well to remember the words of his predecessor, Bill Clinton "A world without walls is the only sustainable world... If the world is dominated by people who believe that their races, their religions, their ethnic differences are the most important factors, than a huge number of people will perish in this century." Clinton wasn't perfect, but he recognized the pointless endeavor of imprisoning humans within man-made (and unsupported) confines. Bush's puppetry act becomes more and more translucent as he continues to support policies which lead to the construction of barriers and the deaths of innocent people. Stone by damned stone.


The jackhammers begin to tear away at freedom and block by block a "temporary" barrier appears in our backyard, between neighbors, across Mexico, in Baghdad, pervading our lives. What happens when we become so accustomed to this barrier that we forget its presence, we forget that we were ever truly free to speak of justice and truth and equality, we forget that we were ever allowed to dissent? Will we lose sight of things that once were our unalienable rights as Americans? will we forget? Bush has succeeded in facilitating mind-blowing acts of radical patriotism while creating a society in which we seem to have forgotten our roots. Who are we to morally impose ourselves on other countries? Who are we to say democracy is the only way to live? YES. It could be the most comfortable, safe, and freeing way to live... but does that mean the rest of the world must follow in our footsteps? Has this command been directly handed down by GOD (the one and only true GOD, of course) to Mr. Bush himself to justify a Napoleonic conquest of the world? Does our country as a whole live and breathe by and pray to this same one God our President claims to act under? Are our hands guided by a war-mongering spirit?


From what i know of Americans, I say NO.


Do we line our own suburban neighborhoods with thick cement walls? We cannot be silent and expect peace to pervade the world and to suddenly appear in our government's foreign policy. There are many Americans who have not been silent a single day about the terrible consequences and injustices of the Iraqi War and I thank them from the depths of my heart. There are also Americans like me... who are waking from a slumber rubbing our eyes and wondering "what the HELL happened to our country?" Those of us who claimed to "never get involved" with politics because we didn’t know where to start, scared that once we start to know our hearts will break, and aware that once we have this knowledge we will never be able to step back into our secure bubbles of nightly-news induced reality. We can no longer be numb to the statistics of the dead, unable to see visions of the flag-draped coffins... and yet we continue to be fed self-righteous lies by politicians who claim to be looking out for the lives of our brothers and sisters across the world.


The director of the factory in "Brave New World" (Adolus Huxley) quotes his forefather Our Ford in a frightening statement "History... is bunk".


Have we come to a point that we're so wrapped up in our actions and reactions of the moment that we are unable to look at the past with any type of intelligent reflective thought? Have we removed ourselves so far from reality that we cannot notice the parallels between our current situation and feudal times, times of the Berlin Wall, the Vietnam War? Do any of these historical events ring enough bells to create a fury of action, do they stir our lives enough that we begin to realize that we're the ones who must take responsibility for changing the doomed course of our country's policies? Have we already forgotten the slippery slope that was Vietnam, and how suddenly our boys overseas were being lost by the hundreds and by the thousands, how the death tolls mounted and mounted to a 58,256 name-long black granite cry to the heavens....


I've experienced this monument, this memorial to a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam. a bitter sob caught in my throat, I wanted to drop to my knees and wail "WHY?" angrily at the skies, to shake the White House on its foundations "WHY WAR?". Blurred eyes searching the heavens for an answer, fingertips tracing letters- each one a prayer of peace on my lips. The Vietnam Wall. Another wall of our history, another wall for which so many boys died needlessly, another wall which divided a country and families and lives forever.


I looked though the iron bars of the White House, choked on my thoughts- it's so small. For the amount of destruction the decisions made within those walls have created, it should be a palace, a small country, a ridiculously giant theme-park adventure complete with flashing neon signs and a "Bombs Over Baghdad" theme park. If one saw the President's lair out of context, it wouldn't be much of a statement of power. I can't bring my mind past it's color- set against a "true-blue dream of a sky" (e.e. cummings), forged of the purest white... where's the spattered blood of the world?


Certainly not on our hands, for we are the purest form of freedom and democracy that exists on this planet, and our actions come with oh-such-good intentions. Adolus Huxley wrote, "Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions, it is walled and roofed with them". Good intentions matter not when they lead to the murdering of tens of thousands of civilians, they matter not when they lead to the death of one innocent person. Stacking our things around us as protective individualistic walls, we are able to feel that we own our own part of the world, and our prized collection mounts with the dust of years of inaction and spiderwebs woven from a life of closed eyes. But, we have our own little lives, our own museums, monuments to our fleeting lives, and we continue to hoard and justify our miserable mizery. Thing by damned thing.


Reading these utopia-based books leaves me wondering what point we've come to in our world... I live in a small town on a mountaintop in Nicaragua where 80% of people struggle to eat every single day yet own the same amount of high-tech electronic mumble jumble as my friends back in the states- giving up their daily rice and beans for a sugary dose of daytime drama and farcical news. Chuck Palahniuk wrote, "The sound shivers though the walls, through the table, through the window frame, and into my finger. These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics. Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed... and this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world". Big Brother constantly keeps the spoonful of sugar within arms reach. Just when we're ready to make a movement toward thinking in terms of freedom and breaking free of societal constraints, there he is dangling shining objects in front of our oogling eyes, enabling us to forget the pain of reality and the necessity of being awake and fully alive. We are being spoon-fed day after day in our educational systems, in our institutions, in our media... with symbols and repeated key words and new things to wish and dream about possessing. Spoonful by damned spoonful.


Did anyone else catch the ironic news of the construction company building the US/Mexican border fence being fined for hiring illegal immigrants to build the wall? What about first-hand accounts such as Michael Finkel's short story entitled Desperate Passage in which he describes an ill-fated venture with a group of Haitians crammed in the hull of a boat named Believe in God? Of the desperate measures those from the poorest country in the Western hemisphere must go to in order to have some hope of a life? What are we saying about our own standards and values if we can't understand that people from these countries, if given any chance or opportunity of having a future, would rather live in the warm circle of their own families than existing on the outskirts of our society?



One of the men in Finkel's story, a Haitian named David, speaks of his stint as a drug dealer in Naples, Florida and his fear that upon returning to the states he will return to this lifestyle in order to afford a North American lifestyle. "In America, he mentioned, there is shame in poverty -- a shame you don't feel in Haiti. 'People are always looking at the poor Haitians who just stepped off their banana boat' he said." the words "illegal immigrants" are just as emotionally and politically loaded as "terrorist" or "insurgent".


What if we were made to look into the eyes of every scared shitless "illegal immigrant" who'd left their home and family in search of the mirage of the US? For our façade of glory? Would we be able to regard them as an equal human and still justify building an eyesore of a fence between the Americas? What if we had to look into the eyes of every mother and father in Iraq, of every “insurgent” brother or sister who'd ever lost someone due to "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? Would we be able to believe in their freedom if we had to brush away their tears, if we were deeply aware of their humanity, if we inscribed every name of an Iraqi casualty on our new wall in Baghdad and traced our fingertips across the letters, the alphabet in a foreign hand yet our own hands connected on a deeper level, aware of the significance of each character, each letter, each pair of eyes?


Would we drop our gaze to the ground and pick up another stone? OR would we cast our stones aside and reach out to grasp our brothers and sisters to honor the lost and help them re-build their world rather than continuing to destroy it? In 1984, George Orwell writes, that if the average citizen "were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore...the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs".


Bombs and walls. Fear and hatred. Self-righteousness. Possessions. Lies. We cast the stone.
We dangerously mock history.


Will we continue to allow ourselves to be fed, spoonful by damned spoonful until we become so engorged and addicted to ourselves that patriotic tears of glory arise with the news of another "insurgent' death?
Will the shining objects in our lives continue to lull us into a nightmarish dream-world in which we forget the reality of freedom and justice?


Will we avert our eyes and continue to cast stones?
Or will we fall to our knees in fumbling clarity and mourn for our war-torn world?
My question is not who will cast the first stone
For as Jesus told us we have all sinned.
My question is, who's humble and valiant enough
to put the first stone back where it belongs
in the arms of Mother Earth?


As Robert Frost wrote:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
what I was walling in or walling out,
and to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
that wants it down.
This something Frost refers to, the deepest part of ourselves, the collective soul of our world, refuses to be silent.


My last question: when will we finally take a moment from our own diversions to stop, to consider, to release that something, to break walls, to break the hand of the spoon-feeding institutions, to rebuild our own world, to remind ourselves of what freedom once was, to regain the glimmer of hope in our eyes?


Put your stone down, return it to its Mother.
Embrace your own selfishness.
Embrace your neighbor.
Let love travel through these walls
and shatter them into the useless rubble .
Let them become a part of history,
a part I hope we'll never again be trained to ignore.

discoveries

last week as i sat outside the casona sharing a beer with my peace corps buddy oliver i started noticing floating spots of light flashing in the darkness of the garden spread out in front of us. in general i would take this to be a sign of impending eye doom seeing as major eye issues tend to run in my family and seeing flashing spots of light is not a good sign from normal eyes, however oliver informed me that there were LIGHTNING BUGS all over the place in cusmapa... which i had never noticed before that very instant. how in the world i missed such a glorious little insect for nearly 5 months when every other bug in the town seems to have found its way into my life or my bed or my pants is beyond me. my faith in the bugs of cusmapa is entirely renewed, because i don't know much about lightning bugs but i have a completely romanticized childlike fascination with them. like i wonder if when the power goes out i could catch a jarful of them instead of using my headlamp. they would make for much softer lighting, of that i am sure.

discovery #1: lightning bugs are the COOLEST BUG EVER. i want one for a pet.

things in my life here have not slowed down remotely, but after an incident last week in which the entire nicaraguan passport system crashed overnight leaving me and 13 kids and their parents standing in a non-airconditioned office in somoto wide-mouthed in utter shock of our bad luck and the irony of the situation (i really had a "michael shut your mouth, we are not a codfish!" mary poppins-esque look on my face, you could have fit a 12" submarine sandwich in there and i would not have noticed). anyways after that shocking turn of events (and by shocking i mean not very shocking at all, sort of like a game of chutes and ladders with much bigger stakes, or like getting a "go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200" card instead of landing on free parking) i basically threw my hands up in the air and surrendered myself to the powers that be. if this trip is meant to happen for my kiddos, it will happen and there's nothing more i can do about it. thank goodness the system crash finally brought our president down here into the mix and magically the system's up and running today (monday) when last friday i was told it would be another month before new passports would be renewed. the way he said it made it sound like the machine that made the ACTUAL passports themselves had just decided to take a haitus and that we just had to be patient with the thing because vacations are important things. great news though, my utter lack of control has made me feel a bit better about this whole blasted situation; and has also led me to a few realizations and new experiences i would not have expected... the first of those being the lightning bug discovery.

discovery #2: planning for chutes and ladders type events to happen on a consistent basis is a good way to make sure you don't end up wide-open-mouthed in a government office or making voodoo dolls of lawyers.

my third discovery of the week involves fabretto's new volunteer up in cusmapa, ingrid, who's in her early forties and is from madrid, spain. she is lovely and i'm really excited to have another companera up there (i mindlessly referred to her as a gringa as in "wow it's going to be great to have another gringa up here" before i knew that 1) gringa is a word only used to discuss folks from the US of A, 2) i insulted her by using this word... this was the same day i met a guy from utah and said "oh i was born in utah, but i'm not a mormon! hahaha" to which he most solemnly replied "i am." DAMN. i put my foot in my mouth even when i speak my own language!). ingrid has made it her goal while she's here that i will speak better spanish and actually corrects me when i make mistakes (which is something everyone else is either too polite to do, or they just like me sounding like an idiot... either way my spanish is not improving). yesterday she told me "i've noticed that you have trouble with the verbs SER and ESTAR" (which are basically the two forms of the verb "TO BE" in spanish... the most important verbs out there) and proceeded to give me a grammar lesson. i think i've been under the impression that my spanish is much more proficient than it actually is, because i am able to communicate with people... but like david sedaris writes, it's likely that i've gone from speaking like an "angry baby" to rambling like a "podunk hillbilly".

discovery #3: my spanish, which i'd thought to be at the level of at least a preteen, has currently dropped to the late toddler years (which i'm told is a very important time of brain development, so i have that going for me, right?!). though a woman today asked me if i was from spain after we chatted for a minute... maybe it's the current euro mullet i have going on (result of cutting my own hair and not using a mirror) and thick rimmed glasses style combo i'm apparently currently sporting.

my fourth discovery (well not really a discovery, since its something i've known for quite some time) is that it's HARD to break a HABIT. for example, i'm staying in managua right now with 13 of the kids and 11 of their parents and we had to be at the migracion office this morning at 8 AM (meaning we'd have breakfast at 7 and that 6 AM would be the ABSOLUTE EARLIEST anyone would have to think about waking up). yet... at precisely 4:30 AM (after i'd sweated my brains out for 5 hours trying to sleep and had moved myself outside to sleep on a sheet on the ground only to wake up a few minutes later with ants crawling all over me... and had finally fallen asleep inside for an hour or so) EVERYONE in my room except me was shuffling around, showering, and getting themselves ready for the day. i vaguely remember looking outside at what i knew was a very early morning sky and asking one of the mom's "que hora es?" and her responding "5" and me turning over and mumbling "porque?" (WHY? which in this situation seemed an extremely valid question). i ended up sleeping until 6 AM and feeling like a SUPER late riser. then when i asked why everyone woke up this morning so early nobody could give me a straight answer other than "it was hot". when i told karlita about my early morning wake up call she said "what do they think, that they need to be up making tortillas or something?!" which sounds insensitive but since karla's nicaraguan i guess she's allowed to say stuff like that.

it's the truth though, i was thinking that for the majority of these mothers this 5 day trip to managua will be the longest vacation they've ever had away from the daily cooking, cleaning, washing, child-caring that goes on nonstop for most if not all of the years of their lives. i wish i had the money to take them to do something really fun! the women are so cute, they tisk tisk over everything and don't seem to be satisfied with anything (ranging from the cleanliness of the sheets to the quality of our food... (to their kids' hair before the passport picture) that isn't starch clean or infused with lots of good-ol cusmapan beans and salt. i have a feeling that my kiddos are going to starve when i bring them to the states, because if they don't like the food we've been eating the last few days they most certainly won't like the food there! and being kids too makes it even harder, i remember being about 13 years old and only liking VERY specific types of foods. we shall see. thing is that i know most of the women here are used to going to bed around 10 and waking up at 4 or 5 to make tortillas, start the day's pot of beans, and feed the animals before their kiddos are up for the day demanding attention. and the concept of vacation just doesn't exist- you're either working or with your family or your work is your family... not a lot of planning for the trip around the world in my new sailboat type of moments around these parts. i also believe that for some of these parents this might be their first trip to managua (lord knows i've been here enough times for all of us combined) because i feel like i'm supposed to be a leader here and i have NO clue what i'm doing. people wait for me to make the first move, it's like i'm responsible or something. yikes.

i had a moment this morning in the migracion office where i was getting frustrated with people asking me questions about the ONE FORM i had each of the parent/kids fill out for their passports... when one of the mom's walked up to me and asked me if instead of signing it she could just put her initials on the form because she DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO WRITE. OH. i'm an asshole. of course they have questions if they can't read or write on the form, and although my spanish is sketchy at best i at least know the letters and the general gists of questions.

discovery #4: although they will complain about being tired all day, every group of nicaraguans i've spent the night with makes a point of getting up before it's light out to make sure they're good and squeaky clean for the day... even if it means just sitting around for 3 hours until breakfast. go figure.

discovery #5: vacations are not universal.

discovery #6: reading and writing abilities are a GIFT i will not take for granted.

my seventh discovery: i really miss my family. all these kiddos are so close to their parents, and i think being around them and not having my parents around leaves me looking like a lost little kid tugging on pantlegs asking "MOMMY?!" hopefully yet peering time after time into the faces of strangers. i want to hug my family.

discovery #7: i really am still a child.

my eighth discovery: i finally found something that i REALLY miss about americans. we are overzealous about thanking each other, sometimes to the point of exhaustion but every now and again it is really important to be told that what you're doing matters and to have people be verbally thankful of your efforts. i've found that to be very difficult these past few weeks as i've been running around like mad trying to collect all these papers and not having a clue what is really going on and literally i have not had one parent or child say a simple "GRACIAS" to me the entire time. the ENTIRE time. sometimes it seems more like they're waiting for me to make a mistake, to falter so they can titter about it. the thing is, i can see that they're thankful in their eyes... and i guess the other thing is what do they REALLY have to thank me for? i'm taking their kids on a choir trip that's basically a fabretto PR tour... their kids will be the face of fabretto in the states. it's not like i'm giving them scholarships to go to college or anything spectacular like that. i can only do so much...

discovery #8: as cynical as i am, i really do miss some things about the states.

i saw my first nicaraguan rainbow on our bus ride down here yesterday and pointed it out to my seatmate miriam expecting her to shrug it off (which is what happens 99% of the time when i point out a natural event to someone here which i consider to be particularly miraculous) but instead she seemed absolutely delighted and we marveled at it for a few brief moments until the highway took our bus around a hill and it was POOF gone. hope lingers.

discovery #9: miracles happen in EVERY MOMENT of every day. miracles ARE universal!

paperwork, punishment and parasites

magda and i have been collecting all the documents the kiddos need to get their passports and visas throughout the past month or so (ever since we found out that the DC trip was actually happening). this whole process definitely has made me realize how lucky i am to have been born in the US because for us to travel ANYWHERE in the world really doesn't take more than a passport... here to GET a passport itself costs about $100 US (of course the kids can't afford this, fabretto is paying for that) and beyond a passport, to go anywhere outside of the country you need to apply for a travelers visa. just to have an APPOINTMENT with the american embassy in managua costs $100. put those two costs together with the amount of traveling, paperwork, etc. and it basically costs an average family's YEARLY INCOME to get a passport and a visa to go to the US (not even including the actual travel to the US itself). ridiculous, meaning that i'd guess about 3% of the people here get to travel outside the country in their lives.

at first i'd been under the impresson that if we were able to collect these papers (original documents, birth certificates of both parents and kids which becomes a bit difficult when some parents were born about 10 hours away by bus and there's no such thing as a telephone signal or fed-ex here) we'd be well on our way to reciving passports. i found out that we needed to deal with a lawyer... and it's all been downhill since then. apparently these kids need a "special letter" in order to get their passports in the first place, even though one of each kids' parents will be accompanying us to the migracion office. this wouldn't be such a big deal but 1) fabretto's lawyer is located in MANAGUA and 2) for whatever reason a LOT of the kids were blessed with ENTIRELY different names than both of their parents... meaning the lawyer needs MONTHS to fix the problems on their birth certificates (though for some reason she's able to fix some of them in a few days... something which i do not understand in the least). so i brought all the paperwork we've collected thus far to managua last friday in hopes of meeting with the lawyer and getting stuff sorted out... hoping to return to cusmapa on sunday. HA!!!! what a ridiculous hope that was. i ended up finding out that 6 of the 20 kids that didn't have passports just simply COULDN'T go on the trip.... that there was nothing i could do, if only i had a freaking TYPEWRITER and could fix the type-o's on their birth certificates, those one or two mistaken letters that are ruining this opportunity. i also found out that for about 4 of the kids who had problems, the lawyer could fix things... but needed me to return to cusmapa, go to the civil registration office, fix the birth certificates, and bring them back to managua. something i am both willing and capable of doing. i finally ended up getting back to cusmapa WEDNESDAY after a lot of waiting around, worrying...

thursday i spent all day in the civil registration office. walking into this 10 X 15 foot room the first thing i noticed were the 3 bookshelves on the wall which appeared to hold ALL the important documents in Cusmapa's history. dated, numbered, PAPER information... though Lenin (the assistant) had a computer to use... everything else was CATALOGUED. of COURSE Panchita (the mom of one of the girls who's going on the trip, and the ONLY person in Cusmapa who's capable of finding things in that mountainous mound of paperwork) was conveniently in Managua for the week. Lenin and I had to find 60-some documents, the first 15 or so of which he looked up and just shrugged his shoulders like "OH WELL" when he couldn't find them, and told me they must have been "repositioned" (whatever the heck that's supposed to mean). about 40 documents into the search i was beginning to get really frustrated because we were NOT having any kind of luck, and it was rapidly approaching 5 PM. at that very moment of exasperation the POWER WENT OUT. one of those moments where tears jumped to my eyes but i found myself laughing anyways. he couldn't type out any of the documents without his computer, so we ended up looking up the rest of the documents and marking them in the books with pieces of paper so that we could find them the next day. Lenin also informed me at this point that he couldn't do the new birth certificates, that i'd have to wait for Panchita to get back (NEXT monday or tuesday) for her to help me. i walked back to the school to try to find magda, and we looked through our collection of parent identification cards to find those she needed to take to Las Savannas the next day to track down their birth certificates, but it kept getting darker and darker and we were left with no ability to see names on the cards. just then, a huge clap of thunder and it started a DOWNPOUR of rain. at this point, there were no tears... more just laughter as i NEEDED to bring my computer home to work on organizing our info for a parent meeting the next day. so i stuck my backpack in a plastic bag and said a quick prayer of "why am i stupidly bringing out this electronic equipment into a nicaraguan rainstorm?!" and decided to take my chances. luckily the rain let up after a few minutes, so my computer was just fine.

i got back to my house to find that there were about 15 people staying the night, and since we hadn't had water the whole week things were in a disasterous state of filth. dishes everywhere, people everywhere. my friend arturo watched me make a peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich and told me i looked "worried" then said, "we have NO LIGHT and i've heard it's not coming back until Sunday!" in a jolly tone and i just shook my head. I NEED LIGHT. the boys were all jovially eating dinner and sharing beers, but i just wasn't in the mood. so i locked myself up in my room and started writing a letter by candlelight to one of my buddies, trying to calm my worries down a bit and to let go of things that i was so OBVIOUSLY unable to control. about half-way into my letter the lights flickered and CAME BACK ON! i was giddy happy, and ran into the living room parading around and whooping, which the guys got a huge laugh out of.
friday i spent the morning searching through more books, and unable to find at least 15 out of the 60 documents we need for the kids visas, i returned to school to plan our parent meeting. i got there and wasn't expecting to see magda but apparently she'd gone all the way to Las Sabannas only to find that the woman who did the registration papers there was WORKING IN SOMOTO till monday. typical.

i spent a few hours putting together some info on the documents we still needed, and sorting out why the 6 kids who couldn't go so i could talk to their parents, then jorje and i hiked up to the public school to find the director to ask if our permission for the kids to miss school had been approved. SOMETHING FINALLY WENT OUR WAY! the director was there, and very kind, and wanted me to know that not only was it OK for the kids to be missing school, but he thought it was a wonderful opportunity for them, and wanted me to tell the kids that their tests would be rescheduled to before our trip so they didn't have to worry about anything while they were gone. the parent meeting was supposed to start at 3 PM, and at 3:15 there were approximately 3 parents there, so I waited for another few to show up, and since magda wasn't there I just started right in. i'm pretty sure there were a lot of blank faces in the crowd and many of them didn't seem to understand what i was talking about (i don't blame them! i barely understood myself!). after the meeting (which most of the parents ended up showing up to at about 3:45) i had each of them come talk to me about the paperwork their kid still needed, and how we could go about getting it. some of the parents just told me flat out that it would be "impossible" to get their original birth certificates, and i told them that if this was the case their kid could not go on the trip. what a predicament. there were also a handful of the choir kids there who came to talk to me about problems with their papers and i hated not being able to really explain to them why they couldn't go, why some kids' problems were getting fixed and theirs weren't. a few of them seemed really bummed out, and others reacted with a "i didn't want to go anyway" type of attitude. i felt devistated, really sad, and helpless- i wish there was something i could do. i kept telling them that i wished i was a lawyer so i could do something more about it, but that i couldn't. two of my favorite girls in the choir, belen and aleyda came and talked to me individually and it ended with them having to leave because we could both sense that the other was about to burst into tears. it was awful. especially because aleyda's one of the cousins of the family i hang out with all the time, and her brother died last year- and he'd been in the choir and had gone to the states in 2004 when they travelled to chicago and colorado... YUK. i knew this was going to happen, but it didn't make things any easier.

i've also been feeling sick for the last week or so (i think my intestines are finally realizing all the yucky parasites they've fought and are giving in a little bit). but i woke up saturday morning and felt like absolute hell. i had told a group of nurses who were visiting Cusmapa for the weekend and didn't speak any Spanish that i'd show them around, so i put my best healthy face forward but the whole day i felt like i was going to pass out. i probably drank about a gallon of water, and took some pepto bismol, and just felt worse and worse. this morning i woke up in a cold sweat at 7 AM and tossed and turned for a few hours, ate some bananas (felt like i had to eat something, but it was not a good idea) then went to bed until 3 PM (something i haven't done since i've been here... but i just felt exhausted and feverish). i started taking some prescription meds my mom sent with me but i am still feeling terrible, and just thinking it's SO typical that my body would choose this moment in time to break down.

cindy and magda are headed to managua tomorrow for cindy's surgery and will probably be gone till wednesday, and i need to get this paperwork done with Panchita as soon as she gets back (i'm hoping she'll be there when I visit this evening- though she was also in managua for a surgery on her little boy who i think has some sort of cerebral palsy) and then head to managua myself... BEFORE tuesday if at all possible. my body is failing me, something which does not happen often. i'm so bad at being sick, because i've been so lucky and healthy for most of my life... i'm just praying that these meds kick in soon cause there's no way i could make it to managua in my current state.

things have got to go up from here, eh?!

camera man

a few weekends ago i took a trip to quilali (a little mountain-valley town in central nica) with 20 of my middle school choir girls, 15 of the older choir kids, and about 7 random Cusmapanians. we started off from Cusmapa at about 10 AM (a good hour and a half behind schedule) and i had the distinct honor of sitting in the front seat of one of the two trucks we took on the journey with two ten-year-olds on my lap for the entire 6 hours. yes, we had two trucks for 42-odd people. quilali's this little middle-of-nowhere town with about 15,000 people in it, which means it's much more modern than Cusmapa and feels like a metropolis. we were scheudled to sing at a Catholic mass at 6 PM so we had a few hours to hang out, eat some lunch, and explore before church. the Catholic church was HUGE (compared to the one i'm used to up here) and was all decked out in pink ribbons and flowers for a quincenera birthday celebration (the girls in Nicaragua have a huge "coming of age" party for their 15th birthday which is basically her parents sending her out into the dating world, putting her on the market- it's a bigger celebration than weddings here). the celebrated girl st up front of the church in her Glenda the Good Witch dress, and our chior was crammed up into the second level music pit with no airflow up a rickety spiral staircase with a broken railing (not a super-pleasant situation). i was fascinated by the event's camer man who seemed to be hyped on some sort of amphetamines, he was rushing around the church panning over the audience in a completely ridiculous and skitterish manner. i'm sure the film was a blur of faces. he was also taping the choir and i kept thinking about how funny it was that some random girl will have me, a wierd gringa, on her quincenera video. little did i know...

so after the mass we walked out of the church to join a procession, led by the Good Witch in all of her glory, down about 6 blocks to the family home. Don Trino's guitar provided a lovely and appropriate soundtrack for the moment, and i held hands with jubelki and dignah and whistled happily at the stars while trying to get them to spin in circles with me. everyone else seemed awfully somber for what i imagined to be a joyous event in this girl's life, but i was really chipper about the whole thing (probably more chipper about getting out of that hellhole of a sauna music pit than anything). still, the camera man came out of nowhere ever onec in a while- paparazzi style, and i was in a jovial mood thinking about his film footage and just loving the moment. when we arrived at the family home/reception there was an awkward "do we go in?" moment (and by moment i mean about 5 minutes). of course all of the little girls wanted to go to the party, and i could tell that the older kids and i were feeling... well... very awkward. the mother/hostess said she wanted a picture of us and motioned for our group to sit at the tables in the front of the room (um... no thanks) so we sort of booked it with half of the girls (the other half had already sat down). we got back to the Padre's house (where we'd stored all of our bags and stuff) and found it LOCKED. (typical)

the lady who was in charge of our group there was hell-bent on getting us all to the party (though she was trying to be nonchalant about it, her motives were completely transparent). i found myself in the back of a truck with her and a bunch of the little girls (pleading "WHY?!" the whole time) as the older girls chose to stay curbside and wait for our return. at that point i just wanted to eat and go to bed, and i could see exactly where this evening was headed. another awkward moment at the party... when we got to the reception ALL of the girls started to pile out (though i had been assured that we were just making the trip back there in order to get the key) and i looked at Beranay (one of the older choir girls) like "are you KIDDING ME?!". so, with a heavy sigh, i resigned to my destiny. of course i ended up seated at the table in the very front of the room (obviously where i was fated to have been seated in the first place) and could not stop laughing. it was such a hilarity to me that none of us knew this girl, we totally crashed the party, and the 4 little ones I was seated with picked at their food (which looked a heck of a lot like beef with mayonayse sauce) and giggled with me.

AND, the camera man came back into my life. true hilarity ensues.

round one: he slowly creeps by, pans across the table, does a triple take long lingering shot of me that the kids notice and laugh at.

round two:
He: "Hi. MY NAME'S EDMOND. DO YOU SPEAK INKLISH?" (no i do not just have my caps key on for the heck of it, he was sort of yelling in my face in monotone, camera still rolling in his right hand)
Me: "Yes. I'm from the United States." (in Spanish)
He: "Oh yes. You speak Spanish?" (I nod) "I have question. I study in Mexico. What... what you think about women?"
Me: "Women? Like women, in general?"
He: "You know, women here, somen in Mexico. They good?"
Me: "No. I think things are getting better for women, but I don't think they're good."
He: "Oh." (as in one of those "OH's" I so often use when I don't have a clue what somebody actually said to me). "I mean abortion."
Me: "What do I think about ABORTION?!"
(remember, the camera is still rolling and we are yelling at each other, he at me for no reason- me at him for clarity's sake)
He: "Yes. Abortion. Many women in Mexico have abortion."
Me: "Yes. And it's illegal here. Do you think it should be illegal?"
(abortion was just legalized in Mexico City, much to the disgust of the Catholic Church - and was just made illegal in Nicaragua last November, even in situations where the woman will die if she doesn't have the abortion)
He: "Yes. I mean... Yes. And you?"
Me: "Well, what if a woman will die if she doesn't have an abortion?"
He: WHAT?! MUCH SLOWER PLEASE.
Me: "WHAT IF A WOMAN WILL DIE IF SHE DOES NOT HAVE AN ABORTION?"
He: "Oh. It's OK."
(at this point he walks off to do another go-round the room and I am in tears thinking "my GOD is that how I sound when I speak Spanish?")

round three:
He: "I have other question. You know cowboy movies?"
Me: (lying) "Yes, I do."
He: "Clint Eastwood, you know him?"
Me: "Yes, I do."
He: "Good. I have question. You know that bad war?"
Me: "The Iraq war? Yeah, It's BAD."
He: "NO NO NO NO, the war... in the century... with the North?"
Me: (incredulous) "Um. You mean the Civil War?" (am I really having a discussion about the Civil War on video camera at a random girl's quincenera party in the middle of Nicaragua?)
He: "Yes. That one. Why was it?"
Me: "Why did we have a civil war?"
He: (nods)
Me: "Well... the South wanted slavery and the north didn't."
He: "Slavery?"
Me: "Yes, slavery." (he nods in understanding though I can tell he's never heard the word before, and I have no idea how to explain that concept in Spanish... here's what I could get across with my current level of Espanol: ' slavery... cuando una persona es propia de un otra persona, y necessita travajar por la otra persona por gratis' ... direct translation ' slavery... when one person is property of another person and must work for the other person for free'. i knew how ridiculous the concept was in the first place so didn't even try to explain it to him)
He: "My question. Who won the war? In the Clint movie the war was not won?"
Me: "Who won the Civil war?" (which I realize is a pretty valid question)
He: "Yes, who won?"
Me: "Well, do we have slaves in the states?"
He: (long thinking pause) "I do not know."
Me: "No, no we don't. The North won."
He: "Oh, the NORTH?! Thank you. And that president?"
Me: "Lincolin?"
He: "Yes, Lincolin was a... a man."
Me: (giving him a break by finishing his thought) "Lincolin was a GOOD MAN."

and, finally, round four:
He: "You are a student?"
Me: "No, I am a teacher. I am their choir teacher." (point to the giggling kids sitting around me)
He: "Oh, a teacher."
Me: "Yes."
He: (with great conviction) "I can tell YOU LOVE JESUS."
Me: (WHAT?! ... a smile with tears in my eyes holding it in...)
He: "Yes, I can tell you love Jesus Christ because you work with kids."
Me: (oh God just please please please hold in this oncoming burst of laughter Callie)
He: "And it's in your eyes. And you know, psychologists say: the eyes are the window to soul."
Me: "Yes, yes that's true." (holding my composure by a thread)
He: "Yes, yes you love Jesus. I'm a painter."
Me: "Oh, you are?"He: "Yes, I paint things that are important to me. I have a painting of an eagle with four chickens. And the mother chicken died for her babies. She was a sacrifice like Jesus."
Me: "That sounds beautiful." (fueling the fire, feeling like a bastard for doing it, but I couldn't help myself)
He: "Yes, yes. I'm a painter. I have 4 paintings."
Me: "FOUR PAINTINGS?!"He: "Yes, four."
(at this point, the power went out... chaos ensued... candles were lit and he still tried to carry on a conversation for a mintue though our group was trying to make an invisible exit out the side door)
He: "Nice to know you!"
Me: "You too." (you have NO idea).

i think the greatest part is that literally the whole of our conversing was taped and that simple awkwardness of being at a formal dinner i wasn't invited to (it would basically be the equvalent of going to a wedding in a small town where you didn't know anyone, the whole town was invited, and you just showed up only to sit at the front table and monopolize the photographer). he was glorious, and made me absolutely gleeful and also made me realize how really ridiculous i must sound about 95% of the time i speak spanish. i just hope i don't yell at people in monotone very often, it's definately not something i intentionally do... but i suppose you never know!

opportunities in yahda-yahdaing

the fabretto bigwig in DC who's organizing our trip in june writes that i should "let the kids know this trip is about work and not all about play". i feel cut to the core by this comment... does she have any idea what this means? or how it feels like a personal cut at me? of course i'm not expecting to be galavanting around the city skipping along without a care in the world when i'm responsible for taking care of 30 kids! of COURSE i realize that i'll have to be doing a bit of puckering up to appease the other rich folks who've provided us with this opportunity. but my question is this: what kind of OPPORTUNITY are they "PROVIDING" for us if the kids are going to DC just to be schlepped around from one venue to another singing for private parties with hors d'ouvres and sparkling wine and marble floors and hand-shaking and name-dropping and all the bullshit things that go along with the public relations and business world?

my next question is how the heck i ended up being a public relations major in college? (though i have known the irony of this for some time- ever since i showed up at a "shadow-a-professional day" in my normal clothes and everyone else there was wearing four inch tall stiletto heels and a business suit... talk about being a sore thumb! i probably stuck out more in that room than i ever will being a gringa in nicaragua).

i refuse to tell my kids that this trip's not about FUN because that's ridiculous. another thing that's just eating away slowly at my choir director's SOUL is that the same bigwig also wrote to me that "it's OK if there's 5-6 kids that can't go. and it's OK if at our international choir festival concert we don't have enough kids to really sound good because THAT'S THE LEAST IMPORTANT CONCERT PR-WISE". are you KIDDING me LADY? what's that supposed to mean? just because we're not being PAID to be at this festival makes it UNIMPORTANT?! for me, this concert is the REASON we are going to the US in the first place- so that my choir kids will have the OPPORTUNITY to interact with kids from all over the world, and will get to experience the marvelous harmonies found in creating art with other children. HOWEVER according to the money money money worldview, of course this would be the least important part of our trip.

ironic and sad that she's using the festival as an excuse to get the choir to the US to use us for a PR campaign, that the festival seems to be pretty important when donors are considered yet loses it's importance somehow in the mix of things. what it really comes down to is i am so frustrated that these kids are looking forward to having time to spend in museums, and experiencing the festival and the city... and instead we'll be running around DC like mad with our instruments going from private concert to private concert... selling our musical souls to make a buck. i suppose i should be grateful for the free trip, and fabretto is paying for everything for these kids to get the trip to DC (which for most of them will be their only trip to the states in a lifetime). but just don't tell me flat out that the trip's going to be about WORK when i'm already fully aware of it.

i figured i knew how things worked in the world of tax-refundable donations but now i'm certain.
all work and no play means a world filled with dischord and unhappiness.

so i'll work on my yahda-yahda-yahda skills, suck it up, put my PR smile on (didn't pay for 4 years at GU for nothing!), and trudge to the capital with a twinkle in my eye.
and i'll find a way to work in a bit of my own magic in the meantime,
little does she know that even when i'm working i'm still playing in my own mind!

un escorpion me pique!

rainy season has officially started here, though we'll have a few days of rain then it's bloody hot for a week before it rains again. we're still experiencing water shortages, and only have running water for about 2 days per week. anyways, all the rain has led to a massive influx of bugs (mainly beetles) and frogs (hopping around in puddles on the street) and other random critters.
last thursday i had a disturbing experience where i found the second tarantula within 24 hours in my bedroom- so i squished it with a shoe only to have the thing basically explode and about 50 baby spiders come streaming out of an egg sack i hadn't seen on its belly. i somehow maintained my composure enough to find a bottle of windex in our kitchen (of course i don't have bug spray or anything useful like that) and drowned the little buggers. now normally i'm all about saving little bugs lives but when they're gnarly spiders like that in my room that crosses the line.

the line was leaped across however that night as i was sleeping. i woke up at around 2 AM to something crawling up my pant leg and knew immediately it wasn't the normal beetle/moth/ant/mosquito experience. so, half-asleep still, i reached my hand down to brush it off and was stuck in my kneecap by a huge sting (OH GOD!) and looked down at my hand to see a HUGE black scorpion clutched on to my fingers (it was the size of my hand- probably about 6 inches long) so i shook it off and it ran under my bed (GREAT) then i sat down for a moment thinking "well, this really could be the end of it all" shaking something awful and trying to make myself breathe. i found my nicaragua guidebook (obviously i didn't have any bug identification books) because i wanted to know if i should go to a doctor, if i had to worry about dying or anything like that... thank goodness i had seen it and knew it was a big negrito scorpion which according to my MOON guidebook are "not normally deadly" to healthy humans. a bit of good news, but didn't make me feel any safer, that's for sure. i tiptoed into the kitchen (don't ask me why at this point i was not wanting to wake my roomates up) and reached into the freezer to get some ice (which was the only thing i could really think to do) since my kneecap felt like someone had stabbed a knitting needle through the middle of it (unlike what the guidebook said it would feel like "a bee sting" HA!). we didn't have any ice, so i grabbed the next best thing... a bag of frozen chicken drumsticks, and laid in bed for a couple of hours with my knee raised feeling the numbness slowly spread through my body. a very unnerving feeling, let me tell you. the wierdest part of it was that though the rest of my body was nearly numb, my knee was still throbbing like crazy.

somehow i fell back asleep for a few hours and when i woke up in the morning i felt much worse. i stood up and immediately had to sit back down, dizzy and unable to balance. i made my way to the kitchen to get a glass of water and to try to eat something (i knew that if i didn't, i'd feel even more faint) and told my roomate chico what had happened to which he replied:

"oh don't worry, i've been stung 5-6 times by scorpions and you'll feel awful for a while but you'll be fine. just drink some milk."

now i don't know anything about recovering from a scorpion sting but his advice seemed better than anything else i'd heard- so i drank the rest of the delicious boxed milk i had on hand and still felt terrible. luckily one of the drivers, jose, was at the house and drove all of us to school so i didn't have to worry about walking there. i told magda what had happened and she was much more concerned than chico, so she had me talk to the doctor at the school who took one look at me and said:

"oh, you'll feel better in 3-4 days so don't worry too much about it. you won't die, they aren't THAT dangerous."

3-4 days of numbness seemed like a pretty big deal to me, and with the way i was feeling at the time i decided to go with the rest of my roomates to somoto where i'd be closer to a doctor who could do something for me if things got worse. the ride down was pretty miserable, but by the time we arrived i was feeling a bit better and my arms and legs were less numb, which made walking a heck of a lot more manageable. the 3-4 days really only ended up being 24 hours, and after that amount of time only my mouth was numb (which i'd heard was the last place to re-gain feeling). so... i stayed in somoto for the night, bought a mosquito net... and now sleep a little bit lighter and am more wary about shaking out my sheets and blankets before going to bed.

ah... the lessons i've learned. at least now i'm not scared of tarantulas anymore, as long as i don't get any more scorpions crawiling up my pants in the middle of the night i think i'll be just fine.

Amarguillo (How Else Could We Understand?)

A blast of the brightest sunshine yellow sparks,
brave amarguillo trees speckled
amidst dried fields of hopeful farmers
withering crops
crinkling pine needles
fallen trees crying for water, for life.
Smokey the Bear shakes in his Forest Service boots.

I’m told the dry season never ended last year,
and in some towns the water gets shut off for three months at a time.
Forty people died in Chinandega last weekend in temperatures hovering between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius.
Heat stroke can’t be blamed when water’s not an option.
The sharpened guillotine blade hangs on a thread,
perched for the fall.
This is normal.

My roommate Fransisco laughs at my awestruck shock at this statistic
and the joy disperses, as fleeting as it came
with my wondering "Como puede vivir sin agua por tres meses?
(an honest question- how do you live without water for three months?)
Honest but severely loaded.

How do you LIVE?
In one instant I’ve found why Nicaraguans have such faith in God.
His answer:
"We believe because how else could you explain a world in which we must live without water for three months at a time? How else would we understand?"
A slap in the face.

How else could a world in which people with all the power choose to
fund and fight unwarranted religious wars based on fear and oil
yet disregard poverty as part of the "other" world,
the THIRD world.

Why would we care about the THIRD world as much as OUR world?

We invest our money CAREFULLY there, in this other world
Just enough to keep them coming back for more
Just enough to keep the hands outstretched
Just enough to keep the UN off our backs
Just enough to keep opportunities for photo opportunities arising
Just enough to keep them silent and downtrodden
Just enough to keep their starry-eyed focus on our American dream alive.

What is this "American Dream"?
If it’s not meant for all of America,
rather meant to justify the rise of the rich to their castles in the clouds
and blame the victims of our carelessness,
our neighbors
who gaze in our dining room windows
awestruck at the opulence
salivating with hope for our scraps
who struggle every day just to live.

I sound cliché-
how do I paint you a clearer picture what it means to struggle every day to LIVE?

Have you woken in the morning to the same hunger pangs, knitting needles in the depths of your stomach that have haunted your dreams for your whole life?
Have you constantly and consciously been forced to drink water infused with sewage and garbage day-after-day simply because you had no other CHOICE?
Has this water given you life-threatening fevers and blinding migraine headaches?
Has your water been carried up a mountainside in 5-gallon-plastic-jugs by your seven-year-old daughter every morning, her back hunched unnaturally under its crippling weight?
Have you also been forced to send this daughter to beg for pesos to buy rice and beans,
her bare feet dodging broken glass and rusted barbed wire?

How do I get you to see this painting in color, not in the black and white of "THE OTHER"?

For if you are to realize that this type of poverty exists in every moment of every day
for millions upon millions of our brothers and sisters
throughout the entire world
and in your backyard
it MUST be in vivid color
high definition if you will.
Do I need a PowerPoint presentation and a flat screen TV
or will these words of impassioned truth
reach beyond your ears and your eyes and into your heart?

These words, " THE OTHER" and "3rd WORLD" must be abolished
we must learn to empathize
if the world can ever change for the better.
If we can open our minds and our hearts to realize
"THE OTHER" as an intimate, essential, precious component of ourselves,
if we can understand that these words "THE OTHER" and "3rd WORLD"
have been fabricated by people with power,
people who judge and fear change,
people who refuse to grant freedom,
and voices to the voiceless
their bullets silenced with a justification of "US versus THEM".

We must not buy into this
unjustified disabling dichotomy
For each time we turn a blind, ignorant, guilt-laden eye
averting our gaze from the pain and suffering of this world
we in fact turn from the deepest part of our soul.

Who felt the right to draw black lines
zigzagged boundaries across our globe?
How have we not noticed these lines are INVISIBLE?
Invisible until we forget the past
and break ground to construct another embarrassing wall
as if blocking our view of the wrong side of the tracks
will make our neighbors disappear.

The make-believe black lines are pathetic enough,
but walls go beyond the zigzags.
We’re playing a game of Risk so real
that if we allowed ourselves a moment of clarity
our hearts would break into a million pieces.

Do we need these fancy adjectives
these walls
to justify how terribly we treat each other?
Is this all just a big game to people like Mr. G. W. ?
I’d compare his game to chess
but I know the only players he’s aware of are the king and the pawn.
Maybe if he could ever wipe that all-knowing smirk off his face
for long enough to say something real
we’d have a glimpse of some sort of truth…

Ironic how mumble-jumbled and repeated key words
"insurgents"
"terrorists"
"freedom fighters"
"rebel forces"
"fanatics"
cause more conflict, misunderstanding, hatred and war than bombs ever could.

How many soldiers to this date have died
defending these words?
I’d tell you but I’m not trying to give a history lesson.
Would it matter more if it were ONE person or THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND?

How can I paint this picture in COLOR when our own government will not allow the media to show pictures of caskets being carefully carried off a military plane draped in those glorified stars and stripes?

An image sticks in my mind, a 2002 clipping from a newspaper scrap booked next to lyrics from John Lennon’s "Imagine" … a middle-aged man, long beard trailing in the dust, white robes spattered with blood, white linen and crimson death pooling around his knees, arms outstretched desperately to the skies, mouth hanging open in a primal wail that only a man at the foot of the coffins of his two children aged four and six years old could pour forth on an unjust world, dried riverbeds of tears marking the end of any happiness and future he’d seen in life. His babies, gone forever at the hands of "freedom fighters".

"Imagine there’s no Heaven, it’s easy if you try."
It doesn’t take much effort to imagine, Mr. Lennon, that there’s no Heaven
when we’re willing to kill each other in the name of GOD.

How do we think GOD feels about these justifications?
Does he sit on his throne in the sky contentedly staring down as we play plastic soldiers
with real guns
remarking to himself "How lovely are these wars in my name?"
(these words strike too close to "Hallowed be thy name")
or "I must give this judgmental sect of soldiers for Christ a first class seat on the train to glory?"
(those who claim "there are two types of people in this world, those who believe in Jesus Christ as their personal savior and those who don’t")

Even if Jesus Christ was our personal savior and the only son of GOD…
I’d still like to hope GOD sees in color.

Or…
Does GOD sit silently as tears stream down his cheeks,
mourning the death of true life?
Pleading for all of humanity
to give up our fabricated terms of differentiation,
to face each other as human beings,
casting fear aside,
breaking down walls,
tearing across boundaries,
looking through open and non-judgmental eyes,
bowing deeply in acknowledgment of the divine in all,
in communion with nature and our Brothers and Sisters,
filling the deep and lonely fear of vulnerability
with simple, deep, and unconditional love?

We claim an operation in Iraq based on FREEDOM.
Is this another fancy word we’ve manipulated for our own causes?
Freedom from what?
From our own fears and anxieties?
From having to explain the selfish reasons we’re still there?
From "THE OTHER"?
From terrorists?
From four and six year-old Iraqi children?

Where does freedom end and murder begin?
It’s a slippery slope;
the boundary between the two as invisible
as those inked black lines flowing across the maps of humanity.

Yet across the deserts of hopeless lands
rise moments of triumph and brilliant life
amarguillos, my eyes see in rusted dry brown and mid-day sunlight yellow
tufts of blossoms defiant in the face of drought,
peeking over walls to the better side of town.

"Amargo, like coffee without sugar" my friend Henry explains.
He speaks of bitterness with an unsettling smile.
It’s why we believe in GOD.
"How else could we understand?"