de raiz a hoja...

Today I was chatting with a dear Nicaraguan friend online and he was telling me how a hurricane hit his city and the neighbors are telling each other, "Oh, my orange tree fell." or "Ay, the poor pecan tree." My friend lamented the fall of the almond trees, which he said he had watched grow up and they had watched him grow up, as well. I told him he should write a poem about it, that the love for trees is as inspiring and powerful as the love for another human, being that we're all part of the natural world anyway.

A few minutes later, a middle-aged man who has been coming to the restaurant every morning for the past week and occasionally making small talk with me excitedly showed me a children's book that he had just bought, La Boda de Chimalistac by Elena Poniatowska. The book was about a lemon tree that fell in love with a Jacaranda and eventually they get married. Ah, tree love.

And my friend was very happy because today is Mother's Day in Nicaragua and I told him that my family always buys trees on mother's day.

Just when I thought the day was already filled with trees and love, I looked down at the bottle of red wine our German couchsurfer left for us and there on the bottle, a little grape vine that looks just like a little tree.

So, in honor of trees and love and beauty, I want to share one of my very favorite poems by Juana de Ibarbourou:

La Higuera

Porque es áspera y fea,
porque todas sus ramas son grises,
yo le tengo piedad a la higuera.

En mi quinta hay cien árboles bellos,
ciruelos redondos,
limoneros rectos
y naranjos de brotes lustrosos.

En las primaveras,
todos ellos se cubren de flores
en torno a la higuera.

Y la pobre parece tan triste
con sus gajos torcidos que nunca
de apretados capullos se viste...

Por eso,
cada vez que yo paso a su lado,
digo, procurando
hacer dulce y alegre mi acento:
«Es la higuera el más bello
de los árboles todos del huerto».

Si ella escucha,
si comprende el idioma en que hablo,
¡qué dulzura tan honda hará nido
en su alma sensible de árbol!

Y tal vez, a la noche,
cuando el viento abanique su copa,
embriagada de gozo le cuente:

¡Hoy a mí me dijeron hermosa!

de repente

Today, as I was getting on my bike and adjusting my bag and scarf to prepare myself to bajar on one of the cobbly streets that connects the neighborhood of el Cerrillo with San Cristobal's city center, I had a sudden rush of remembrance. Kalamazoo, the hills, my bike, the cool weather of fall, even Western Michigan University- I could feel it all so deeply in one profound second, I almost expected to look up and see a familiar Michigan face stroll or bike by. Ah, but then I remembered that I am in a city that I also love, where it is also beautiful to float down hills on a bicycle and feel the wind on my face, where every couple of blocks I do see a familiar face.

I'm going to miss San Cristobal. But, I know I'll be back because it's one of my eternal homes now. I'm very lucky to have so many.

thursday

I like when the restaurant is filled with familiar faces. I like when people tell me exactly how they like their coffee, so I don't make it too strong (as usual) or too weak. I like that today in the morning it rained for about 8 minutes and now the sky is filled with large, white clouds but not grey. I would like to remember many of these things.

verduras

A taxi just pulled up really fast and stopped in front of the restaurant. From the passenger seat, a short, elderly man leapt out and ran to the trunk, hoping not to stop traffic too long, I suppose. The taxi driver flew around from his side of the car and opened the trunk. The old man then lifted a big bag of cauliflower out and quickly set it on the sidewalk. In a few seconds the two men took several smaller, black bags from the trunk and set them on the sidewalk beside the cauliflower, all filled with fruits and vegetables, for our store. Small moments have so much meaning for me here. Across the street two women are leaning against a wall and chatting, now they've parted ways. Next to where they were standing, a small, grey-haired woman with glasses puts a key in the padlock to her store. She looks like the ideal, typical abuela and I know that now she will start to hang a selection of Guatemalan clothes between the doors. Calle Real de Guadalupe is like its own community of shop keepers, bartenders, waiters, receptionists, sidewalk sweepers, wide-eyed tourists, bleary-eyed youth. We all see each other on a daily basis, a living portrait of our lives, and we see each other head for our homes late at night. The electronics store on the corner usually is blasting some type of dance music, whether it be cumbia or American music from the '80s, making the mercadito of a few small vegetable stands feel almost as lively as the main market. I am lucky to live just around the corner. Around another corner live dear friends, around another memories, around another a place I think about trying, around and around and around.

fidel castro responds to barack obama

The English version

"Is it right for the president of the United States to order the assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may be?

Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the torture of other human beings?

Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?"

- F. Castro

Barack's Comments

a sad story

Good-bye, Bananas