These full moon evenings are so
fleeting, if not in their duration, then in the number of them I have
left in this place. I will miss the southern sky. I will miss it
desperately.
Dusk came down around me tonight like
a slow curtain, the drawing down of the final act of the day. I was
sipping a glass of wine as I usually do because it reminds me of my
father. I was smoking a cigar as I usually do because it reminds me
of my grandfather and because my neighbors hand roll the tobacco and
it is gorgeous to see their dark, driftwood hands delicately handling
the leaves until they are no longer leaves but fine long braids of
herbal, smokey, smooth meditation.
I think I will cry when I leave Peace
Corps, when I leave Paraguay, but I am still trying to figure out
why.
There is a home that I have some
million of light-years away from this place. I know that. I remember
that place in my bones; my muscle memory of suburban America may be
dulled and confused, but I have no doubt that I will sigh when I
finally lay back down in that same old bed in the basement that my
dad carved out of wood all those years ago.
At the same time, I could not be
farther from that place, that home. I am farther from it than I have
ever been and I wonder if I will have to make a decision eventually
whether I want to go back to it, back back all the way back to the
cradle of familiarity and ease of comfort, or to carry on farther
away until I can no longer even see it or feel it on the horizon.
I have a home here in Paraguay. I know
that. I feel that in my bones every morning when I wake up. Whether
it is a good day or a bad day, it is a day that will pass under this
sun that I have come to hate and respect, next to these
once-strangers that I have come to know and love, in this great
expanse of red dirt and green grass and parceled-out forests that
have stained my hands and breathed life into my tattered soul when I
felt lonelier and emptier than ever in my entire life. I will miss
the southern sky.
Home is a strange idea. Some people
always have it their whole lives, almost without respite. That must
be a glorious feeling, it must also be paralyzing. Some people never
have it and find no need to seek it. That must be a glorious feeling,
it must also be lonely. Some people have it and then loose it,
whether by fate or by choice, and spend their lives trying to recover
it or to carve a new one out of whatever they find as they wander.
I am of the latter category. I had a
home, a lovely beautiful home with family and friends that loved me
dearly and whom I loved back. The love is still there, but one day I
chose to leave and once that decision has been made, there are
inconceivable obstacles in any direction from that point onward. I
will always love where I came from, if for no other reason than that
it carried me though so many years without letting me fall too hard. I
was the vessel that unaware traveled along the strange path of
middle-class suburbia.
Since then, that same vessel has
crossed continents and climbed mountains, laughed and cried and
soared and sunk. I have loved deeply, broken into pieces, thought
about nothing and everything, and still I am that vessel but instead
of being carried, I am carrying on myself. I
will always love where I came from. But I will always love where I am
going more.
If
the day comes where I must choose: home or something beyond, I think
I will always choose to keep walking. Everything changes. Always.
That home I left does not exist anymore. Only insomuch as I hold it
in my head and my heart. There is nothing to go back to, there is
everything stretched out ahead of me. It is hard and it is terrifying
and I don't know if I have the courage or the strength sometimes. I
doubt myself. But that is what the wine is for.
Adelante
chera'a.
from
Paraguay,
-little hupo