It’s never easy to leave the place you’ve chosen to call home. But if there’s a sign to look for from the universe that serves as confirmation that it’s time to go, then I’d say a neat pile of shit logs and a puddle of piss on your bedspread on your penultimate night in Antigua, Guatemala is a nod indicative that this stint back in Guatemala has run its lovely course, and it’s time to trade the comforts of an apartment and the bustling debaucheries of a whimsical web of amigos for the intrepid uncertainties of the road.
The pooping and peeing on my bed occurred somewhere between the hours of 11:08pm-12:34am. Based on the placement of the poop and the piss, I’ve ruled out all female friends at an Adíos Dinner. The poop and the piss were in different places. Had a female done it, then presumably these would have been the same place. That leaves the gentlemen and the dogs in attendance as suspects. I think it’s safe to say it was either Nick Regazzo, or one of the three party goers who say woof.
Shortly after I discovered my unwanted presents, I wrapped up all the bedding, flipped the mattress, and deposited the soiled bedding in the garden where I planned to wake up before our maid came to warn her. But sleeping in, my maid, cleaning up a mess from a shindig, found an unwelcome surprise of dookie and OMG! when she came upon my bedding. “So this is how gringos party . . .” she must have thought. I paid her double that day.
I’m jotting this post in pauses of conversation with a Canadian/Guatemalan couple on my first connecting flight to New York. They share a familiar: Guatemala is hard to leave. The climate is difficult to leave. Your friends are hard to leave. The thousand of things you still have left undone are difficult to leave. The lovely soul I shared a New Year’s kiss with on the day of my arrival and a goodbye kiss this morning was difficult to leave.
I leave Guatemala so that I can return. My months away encourage me to be present in the unreturning moments. Every time I come back to Guatemala, I feel the growth from my months spent away. Every time I leave, I carry lessons, new friendships, poetries, melodies, adventures and debaucheries from my time spent here. It’s not that I think people develop faster if they move around a lot, just that the markers of that change are more defined and easier to articulate when geography is whismsical.
From here, I again throw myself out into the world. I have three weeks to spend in New York, playing a few music gigs and doing what I can to promote my book. Then, on April 10th, I fly one-way to Asia–a part of the world I have yet to tread, in search of the usual: stories, adventures, amigos, charitable efforts worth writing home about, and the sort of renewal and perspective that comes from setting off to the not-yet-personally-known.
As usual, I have a few hundred bucks in the bank, a few steady freelance gigs, a few accepted article queries and the belief that this mode of existence it not only worthwhile, but will one-day break me out of this self-imposed and lovely poverty.
It has been a good trip back, and a bi-annual reminder of why all of us here choose to stay or return to the Expat Candy Mountain of Antigua, Guatemala.
Adios again Guatemala. Hello NYC. See you soon Asia!
-LMA
