ideas, stories

I’m convinced. Nothing convinces me like puking convinces me. Puking convinces me with absolute pure and immutable resolution bigger and more solid than a huge windowless brick building that life always has a base or even baser place waiting just one bad dinner away.

So here I am on my hands and knees on the floor over a half full pan, in that baser place. I think about how some boxers puke before weigh-ins, then next thing I know I’m remembering the club and how everybody talked about the legendary fast food runs that coach treats his fighters too after the weigh in, and this one time when someone’s like “ah man, I’d load up on double macs” and one of the assistant coaches is like “awwwwWWw MAN that stuff’s nasty, you gotta go B-K or the Bell,” which by the way is totally the truth. But that’s mostly aside of the point, except that this thought triggered another one, and in a moment, me on my knees over a pan, pathetically wheezing little breaths because for a reason I don’t understand puking jacks up the respiratory system, every single strategically placed subliminal message of McDonalds’ big and disgusting food came rushing into my nauseous head at once.

I puked again.

ideas, stories

Running down a mountain after the last gray light has begun to fade away, I see a firefly for the first time in my life and stop running, hold out my hand and it lands on my hand like it knows me, this little insect, absolutely nothing at all and at the same time the neatest little beautiful thing, walks on my finger then lifts up again lighting its own way off into the last bit of dimming light. Then they all came out and lit my way as I ran down the mountain.

Exquisite grammar is so far out of the field of question, even words just seem wrong.

stories

I cried my eyes out last night for the first time in many months, I cried silently in the office because the security guard was there, and even though and him and I are buddies and he knows that it hit me hard when the little baby died yesterday, I just didn’t want him to see me crying, not that way. When I finally finished the work I needed to do I packed up my stuff and left. Ya te vas? asked Don Alvaro as I walked out and closed the office door. I said yes, that I finished my work and the rain passed, it’s time to go home and have dinner. It had been a perfectly clear evening, and Don Alvaro understood and wished me a good evening and a good night of rest.

ideas, stories

After running halfway up and then back down a mountain’s foothill in hot sun, showering and then eating beef stew exquisite grammar just feels wrong.

stories

There’s anothern.
He ran his arm down the hole and lay on the ground feeling about in the dark beneath them. He closed his eyes. I got him, he said.
The dog he brought up was dead.
Yonder’s your runt, Billy said.
The little dog was curled and stiff, its paws before its face.
He put it down and pushed his shoulder deeper into the hole.
Can you find him?
No.
Billy stood. Let me try, he said. My arm’s longern yours.
All right.
Billy lay in the dirt and ran his arm down into the hole.
Come here you little turd, he said.
Have you got him?
Yeah. Damn if I don’t think he’s offerin’ to bite me.
The dog came up mewling and twisting in his hand.
This aint no runt, he said.
Let me see him.
He’s fat as a butterball.
John Grady took the little dog and held it in his cupped hand.
Wonder what he was doin off back there by himself?
Maybe he was with the one that died.
John Grady held the dog up and looked into its small wrinkled face. I think I got me a dog, he said.
——-

You sure you don’t want a glass of water?
No mam. I’m alright.
Betty, he said.
Yes.
I’m not what you think I am. I aint nothin. I don’t know why you put up with me.
Well, Mr Parham, I know who you are. And I do know why. You go to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.
Yes mam.

From Cities of the Plain, by Cormac McCarthy

I’m gonna make a big stretch…McCarthy is like Messi. Yup. Messi doesn’t use tricks or gimmicks or anything that he doesn’t need, just perfect timing and sense of the game. He’s so good he doesn’t need that silly stuff. Reading these books, it’s like that–there aren’t tricks or gimmicks in the plot, and it’s all so much more story for it.

Down drift the leaves of change, I think the long time standing winner in my book of series of books, the Hitchhikers Guide, has come to the end of it’s season there.

ideas, stories

I have always loved to goof off, it’s so great to live the happy go lucky life–I’ve thought of aspiring to be the man who’s whole life is that life.

Almost..but not. Not all the time.

When faced with bad and dark things in this world you’ve gotta let your blood boil sometimes, some days at the end of a week that is lonelier than an empty cave on a rainy day or when a friend dies, you’ve gotta cry.

Sometimes. And the rest of the time I’ll be the leprechaun on the pogo stick.

———–

This was written about a week ago, here’s what happened yesterday, a conveniently timed epilogue:

I’ve been sick for two weeks now, it started with a nasty fever and sore throat, muscle aches and all, dropped down to a mild sore throat, now it’s a runny nose and cough. So I haven’t been sleeping all that well. When I’m tired, I actually usually fare well with controlling my temper.

Yesterday was valentines day. I didn’t get to sleep till late, and at three in the morning a ****-*** *** ****-**** ***-**-*-***** ****-**** weak excuse of a man pulled up at the window of one of my housemates (whose room is adjacent to mine), and proceeded to serenade her with one abominable pop song in spanish and then another, at full volume from his Landrover with the windows down.

I woke  up. Not only did I wake up, I woke up from a good dream. You know that feeling, when you don’t really remember the dream, but you know it was a good one, and you just woke up from it? Yeah, it was that. The songs finished, finally, and the (insert a lot of asterisks here) drove away. Puchiga mucha.

So rolled to my other side and closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. And started to cough. And coughed more. Legit, abs-hurting real coughing.

So, at this point I’m not only utterly indignantly disgusted at this pathetic excuse of a man that doesn’t have a pair to just knock on the door to tell a girl he likes her (ok, not gonna lie, when I’m tired and sick and it’s 3am, my temper isn’t too tempered) but also mad, because I have to get up at 6 o’clock and wolf down breakfast so I can get to the office because there’s a whole bucket load of work waiting for me that I’m not entirely convinced ought to be as so.

Easy Dave..chill. It’s their way of celebrating Valentines day. Yeah it seems really weird and offensive and…well, weird, but get over yourself already. He’s probably a good guy, likely not worthy of half that many asterisk-words. You just need to stop being a judgmental gringo and go get a nice cup of tea to settle your throat and go back to sleep.

Ok, a cup of hot green tea with panela (pre-sugar sugar-cane extract. Mmmm) sounds really great. So I went to the kitchen for my mug. Now, I’m not sure if it’s a USA thing, or maybe just a Dave thing, but I have MY mug. I like MY mug, it’s from the Marine Hardware Supply store in Anacortes, one of my favorite shops in one of my favorite places in the world. I miss that shop and that town and I like my mug. Every time I use my mug, I wash it out and set it by the coffee machine; creature of habit, I like my mug. So I was alright, calm cool and collected. I’m just going to have some nice tea and go back to sleep.

I hobbled tired halfway to the kitchen–then walked back to my room and put on my hoodie, then went to the kitchen for my mug. It wasn’t there, so I looked around for it. There sat my mug dirty on the table half full with cold coffee and with sticky sugar residue on the inside and on the outside too.

So much for calm, cool and collected.

Two cups of tea and something like two hours later I fell asleep on the couch.

(insert a lot of asterisks here).

That all may not be a bad and dark thing in the world, but it takes the (asterisks) silver medal.

photography, stories

She’s an orphan, taken in by an old widow who lives in the small community of Yula San Juan Nueva Esperanza. The widow, 65 years old, works in the fields while her daughter takes care of four orphans; a fifth orphan, a little 6 year old boy, is going to move in with them in a week.

This may be the best photo that’s come from any camera of mine–and disgruntlingly enough I wasn’t the one who took it. Deisy, a coworker, took the picture, in full-auto-mode. 1/6s shutter, iso 400, f3.0…like, what…but…how?

I tweeked the exposure in lightroom–the camera’s meter overcooked the exposure by a hair–otherwise it’s unedited.

Look at her smile.

Dear God please help this little girl to never ever forget how to spin around and dance and smile.

ideas

So as I was eating a really delicious bowl of beef stew (to avoid “bragging,” per se, I’ll say that I have about perfected making beef stew to my taste) and a piece of french bread, a thought came to me. I could live off of this.

Then another thought came to me.

I think I will.

ideas

Take a look at the first before you read this second one,
http://wp.me/p14q4r-Rx

Also, I’m not sure whether or not I think the word god, as used here, should be capitalized or not. Thankfully the word Christian is a straight up syntax question without baggage, so it stays normal.

I don’t like to write something that’s not a story; I’m not very good at it and it feels stuffy.That said, here she goes.

The churches here in Guatemala have given me some problems, of them there’s one whopper. They made me realize something: I feel that god is for people who have good education and read lots of good books. If you don’t wonder deeply about redemption and covenant and all that and then go have a scotch and cigar and talk about all that with another  well educated book reader, if you don’t ponder infinity or make philosophical jokes about god…I feel you’re pretty much screwed.

When I first arrived here I first noticed that the churches are loud–the one across the street from my house is unfortunately very exemplary. They sing a lot of songs that sound much like what I imagine pagan chants sound like. They don’t sing the worship songs I know, like and am moved by. Then, when I began to visit churches and hear radio sermons, I noticed that they always preach very topically*. That’s not all, the topic almost every time hits hard on prosperity doctrine. Also, when someone prays it does not sound to me like a boy talking to his father or a woman to her mentor, what I feel prayer should be closest to. Instead it sounds like a screenplay being exagerated by an unskilled actor.

All these things together in my mind made for a single mental swing of ego and judgement: “wait-all these people are fake Christians. What’s all that   about?” If you want to duke it out with me for having thought that thought, take your best shot and see what happens.
So I notice all these things that are so different, and I am really bothered. I think to myself that I’m not like them. The next thing I think is “why?”

Why am I not like them?

I’ve come to the place I am at with respect to god by four things: (1) praying, (2) arguing about god and man, (3) thinking and (4) reading. So then I think to myself “of these four things, what makes me not like them?”

They pray here; they pray really differently, but prayer is such a complicated and peculiar thing I’m just going to leave it at “they pray here,” and so rule out number one. I’ll smoosh 2 into 3: arguing about god and man only counted when the arguement made me think, and what counted was the thinking, not the arguing. I know that the major part of how I think came from my studies at the university, and I know that very few here have had an education like mine. I’ll keep number three, with smooshed-in 2, and rename it “education.” Lastly there is reading. I’ve simply read more substantial books than the majority of churchgoers here. Through these books I’ve seen so many crazy different ideas and wild created worlds. Without doubt what I’ve read is key to how I think and a not-insignificant part of how I’ve come to where I am with respect to god. So I’ll keep number four.

So the result is that I threw out number one (prayer), smooshed number two (talking) into number three (thinking), and kept number four (reading). Education and books. So I look at these people and think to myself, they are spiritually fake and I am the real deal because of a degree I earned and the weekends and evenings I’ve whittled away reading books.

And worst of all, I have neither scotch nor cigar nor another “educated” book-reader to go argue, banter and joke about this with.

…maybe for now that’s best.

The end

———-

PS:
I implicitly cursed once. If you spotted it on the first pass, come visit me and I will make you a complex three course meal in 2 minutes flat and then give it to you.

*If you’re not familiar with preaching, there are two general ways to make a sermon. Exegesis is exposition using something resembling the “when did who say what to whom, where were they, and so why they say it like that at that moment?” It’s like this: imagine you were my boss’s coworker and needed to completely understand a very quickly-written incomplete email I’d written to him. You’d first need some knowledge of me and my job. You’d need some feel for the context of the email: was I pointing out a problem, clarifying a detail of an in-progress design job or maybe poking fun at the CEO with an inside joke? This is a good way to preach: good exegesis leaves little room for subjective error. Obviously there must still be a personal element-a preacher can’t just spew facts. But without the presence of rigorous reason and fact, sermons are at best lukewarm and at worst extremely decieving. Topical preaching is exactly what it sounds like: an arbitrary topic and an arbitrary batch of bible verses, almost always clipped out of context, that “talk” about it, where the definition of “talk” is up to the preacher’s whim. It is, at the core, the preacher expressing an idea or viewpoint in terms of phrases from the bible. If the idea or viewpoint is good, then often no harm is done.
stories

Last Saturday:

12 hours traveling (4 car, 8 bus), enough dramamine to kill a freakishly large lab rat, possibly the single most delicious lamb meat I have ever had in my life for breakfast at the highest place in central america with blue sky above and clouds on the horizon, one sponsored child successfully examined for hearing aids that will let her be a kid again and at the of the day one extremely sore butt.

Edit: I tweaked the exposure of the second picture in lightroom a little bit. Otherwise they’re both unedited.

funny

Unofficial name change:

I’m David Francisco.

(Trying to use my actual last name when I call to reserve the cancha just makes for a lot of problems)