I have had an incredible amount of time to think lately, lying on my back in my hotel room sweating out the afternoon and staring at the wooden slats in the cieling.
Most evenings I walk the curve of the bay from rocky cliff to rocky cliff, maybe three miles, just to pass the time.
I came here to Nicaragua to escape a stagnation that was threatening to devour my persona. Crippled by seventeen months of a hated job, I felt a desperate urge to truly enjoy my life, for a change. Nicaragua being the last palce that was fully true seemed the ideal candidate for a revival.
I have traveled from the extreme north to the extreme south, in doing so, I´ve accomplished so much. I have encountered people from all over the world, sharpened my Spanish skills back up to a point, and began the physical & mental transitions I so desperately saught.
It is now almost two months since I left the US. Along with the wonderful gifts life on the road in Nicaragua has given me, come some unwanted attachments. I will make no reservations about this, the road has of late become more of a chore than a release for me. When I was leaving Granada for the second time a few weeks ago, I was struck by this sinking and almost nauseating sensation… where do I want to go? It wasn´t a liberating feeling, I wasn´t filled with the wonder of freedom, rather overdosed with it.
Is that really possible? You tell me. I walked into the center of the bus terminal in Granada and waited for one of the assistentes to come up to me. ¨Oye Chele…. ¿Rivas?¨ As I had planned earlier in the day, I nodded my head and boarded the bus to Rivas. It was that simple, the seed carried by the wind. Had the first assistente come up to me and said ¨oye, ¿Managua?¨ I would´ve gone there instead.
I came here a miserably unfocused ball of nerves. It didn´t take long for this country to grate off the dead skin, and recalibrate me. I humbled myself. I humbled myself spiritually in the presence of intense poverty. I humbled myself physically on the wind-swept upper slopes of Momotombo. I was able to crawl back into the world of Spanish un mundo donde existe otra forma de Travis. Un mundo donde yo he construido una persona nueva, con un idioma nuevo. En este mundo soy mas tranquilo, mas dulce, mas sincero, y mas que nada- menos enojado con las cosas que pasaron mal en mi vida hasta hoy.
I set my departure date the 29th of May because, hell, its what I clicked on. It also fell just inside the 90 day visa-range. I picked that time frame because I was certain I could get done what needed doing. As I sit here early in the morning in San Juan del Sur, I realize that its done.
The physical transformation is well underway, shedding the layers of flesh that I carried with me to scale industrial nightmares and survive bitter winters. Moreover I now have the ability to continue this trend for myself. I brought multivitamins with me here, and after two weeks I almost never took them. I found my cuisine to be so diverse and utterly satisfying that the thought never crossed my mind.
I began to read again, heavily, while here. I found myself in possession of such a wealth of unoccupied time it was the wise choice to prevent myself from becoming stir-crazy. Reading a good book is a blessing, I´m in awe of good writers and in them I see visions of what I am capable of. In bad writers it´s even better, I flop the book to my chest and call them names out loud… I read it all regardless, kindling my desire to prove that I can do it better.
I have new hobbies, you could say, renewed focus on things that provide me with a deeper level of happiness than the cheap means America hawks to its youth. And by cheap I don´t mean inexpensive, because they never are. I have learned that I am still young, believe it or not. Its fashionable for people to simper about their age… and now I realize that I wouldn´t want to go back to 21, even if I could. I don´t want to give up what I´ve learned, I don´t want to go back to that spastic, headstrong mode of unenlightenment.
I finally feel that my life has swung through the bottom of the curve. Finally. So what now?
I´m coming home.
I´ve made that decision for no less than a dozen reasons, and all of them are particularly good. The prime factor is that I now feel drawn to other things, new horizons that I cannot reach from where I am. I have encountered a whole heap of hopelessly selfish endless-summer types where I am right now and I find myself reacting so caustically to them. That is not who I am. I am a worker, and a strong one at that, anyone who ever climbed a smokestack with me knows that. I want to build, I want to create now more than I want to revell.
In leaving Nicaragua early I am leaving exactly two things unfinished. I will not travel to the islands to learn diving. This has the vague fragrance of disappointment, but I know deep down its fallen from my priorities. Beaches are beautiful, and I´ve walked barefoot on about 6 here, but those expanses of sand become deserts after a point. Specifically, I´ve lost the desire to want to learn to dive by myself. This isn´t a defeatist decision, I´m leaving that one out there. I´m leaving it like the gemstones the Goonies left for One-Eyed Willie… no, that´s Willie´s! I wan´t to always look to the southern sky and know that sometime I will return, with someone, to put that last piece in the puzzle.
The other thing I have yet to accomplish is the completion of a novel, which is a funny concept to me. I have written more than a novel´s worth since I´ve been here. I have written my ass off and pushed my poor wrist a decade towards carpal tunnel. My skill and awareness as a writer have multiplied substantially since I´ve come here, and if they haven´t then why the hell are you still reading this? :)
To be completely honest with you I found out that I´m not really a novel writer. I found that out because I´ve read several ¨books¨ that are fictional and yet certainly not novels. I don´t have the patience to do things that way, and I actually believe that the dwindling supply of readers on this planet doesn´t have the time to want to read something like that. A forty page chapter doesn´t fit so well into a crosstown subway ride. I´m still a writer, I´ve just realized its not worth writing if I don´t enjoy the process, if its not in my own style (which I have faith in). You´ll see, I swear.
So those two things aside I have smacked my goals out of the ballpark. I went 3-4 with 3 rbi´s, 2 runs, a stolen base, and a triple shy of the cycle. Again, the two outstanding issues will be addressed in their due time. The last time I left Nicaragua I felt such a love for this land but I wondered, will I ever make it back? Its quite far away, and for me tends to involve pretty big chunks of time… would it be a reality? The dream whose embers smoldered in my mind for so long flared back up and became real.
This time, in leaving Nicaragua, I love her doubly, and I know that I will be back. There are no doubts. Do you know that I´ve spent about 1/50th of my life here!? That´s pretty intense to me, and I know the tail end of that fraction will shrink. This place is a home to me, not a second home- another one.
The title of my blog Wandering Star is not my own cooking. Its from a Portishead song, the refrain of which is
¨Wandering star, for whom it is reserved, the blackness, the darkness, forever.¨ The relevance of that symbol, to me, functioned on several levels. Now I happen to be much less concerned with the darkness, which has always been everywhere, but with the inner light. The star-like qualities that I´m bringing back with me.
Selah.
3 years ago